Erin's Way

by Laura Browning

  “Or fell asleep at the wheel,” Sam grumbled. Fools. Nobody needed to be out on a night like this one, especially just joyriding. Icy patches from the last storm were still refreezing at night, making driving risky.

  In the pasture, on the other side of the car, they heard Carter’s deep rumbles and a higher pitched voice.

  “I’m fine, man. Hey, jerk, get your hands off me. Ooh! Was that cow shit I stepped in? Oh, God. Oh gross. That is so freaking disgusting. Man, I hate this place! I always hated this place.”

  Stoner looked at Sam, who saw the same shock of recognition reflected in the senator’s features before both of them slipped and slid down the embankment in a sudden hurry, running across the pasture to the car. Sam skidded to a stop, all of his thoughts jumbling together, but what lingered in his mind was, not like this, Erin, not like this.

  Erin looked up as she heard them and grinned. The grin started Sam’s heart pounding until he saw her bloodshot eyes in the glow of the flashlight. “Hi, Daddy! Hi, Sammy! I had a little accident.” Then she leaned over and vomited right at a very surprised Carter’s feet. Sam doubted it was the puke that floored Carter. Hearing Erin call Stoner Daddy probably accounted for the look on the foreman’s face.

  As Stoner slowed, so did Sam. They approached cautiously, as if they had encountered a wounded grizzly and weren’t quite sure how it would react. But then confronting Erin had always been that way. He never knew exactly which Erin would show up. Would she snap his head off or twine herself around his heart? Sam had been struggling with that since he’d first met her when she was nine. No matter how much he’d tried to forget her over the years, it hadn’t happened. His feelings had just changed.

  “Erin?” Stoner ventured quietly. “What are you doing here?”

  Sam sniffed the air, inhaling an all too familiar odor. Any nostalgia he might have been experiencing evaporated. “Darn it, Erin. Have you been smoking pot right here on my land?”

  She straightened, her eyes wary as she looked between the two men. “Don’t worry, Daddy…Sam. I’m fine, just a little head injury. So nice of you to ask, and nice to see things haven’t changed. Oh wait, I guess they have, because the last time you two were this close together, Daddy, you were trying to choke Sam at the same time you were calling me… Let’s see. What was it? Oh yes, a ‘white trash tramp and no daughter of yours.’ Fourteen was such a good year.”

  She glanced at Carter’s gaping jaw and smiled coolly. “Another fond memory of childhood in the Richardson household.” Erin tilted her head back and laughed. “Hi, Daddy. I’m home!”

  “Damn it, Erin,” Stoner muttered as anger and concern warred with each other in his expression, but when he reached for her, she stumbled backward, shivered, and glared at him. Her whole body trembled, and Sam wasn’t sure if it was from cold, drugs, or just plain nerves.

  Depression weighed on Sam. He rubbed the back of his neck where the muscles tightened with tension. Just once, he wished his encounters with Erin and Stoner could be different, but they all seemed to begin and end the same way with all three of them tense and on the defensive.

  Erin scrubbed her hands up and down her arms as if she were trying to jumpstart the circulation there. “I can’t find my coat. I thought it was on the backseat,” she blurted angrily, “and I’m cold.”

  Sam saw she had on only a sweater. He pushed past her and searched the car, emerging in a moment with a polar fleece-lined ski jacket. He helped her on with it and zipped it. Then he saw the blood trickling down the side of her head. His breath hitched. Fear tightened his gut. He stepped in close enough to touch her head, nerves tightening when she looked up at him for just a moment with her guard down.

  “Erin,” he murmured, but the door had already closed. Her guard was up and her chin jutting. “You’re hurt.” Without waiting, he swung her into his arms and carried her back across the pasture. Somehow, he managed to get her up the bank without landing either of them in the mud. After ripping open the back door of the still running truck, he set her in the warm interior. Erin’s face was pale and her eyes big and dark in the dim light.

  “Stay here!” he ordered. His face felt tense, his brows drawn tightly together. “We have to fix the fence, then I’ll run you and Stoner back to his truck.”

  Erin stared at him. As if the life had suddenly drained from her, she closed her eyes. She leaned her head back against the seat, grimacing in pain. “Okay,” she muttered tonelessly.

  “Erin!” Sam grasped her shoulder, thinking of last fall when she’d bolted as soon as he’d left her alone at Richardson Homestead after giving her a ride home. “You will stay, right?”

  For a second he saw something hot and intense in her gaze, but she looked away and the moment was gone. “Yes. I have to. I don’t have anywhere else to go.”

  He ignored that remark for now. In his experience, Erin appeared and disappeared wherever and whenever she felt like, as long as it was nowhere near him. He tamped down the ache in his chest that thought brought with it. The more drama she could create with her abrupt arrivals and departures, the better. Sam slammed the door and yanked the spool of wire and the temporary posts out of the pickup bed. He turned as Carter and Stoner reached the road.

  “Let’s get this fence up,” he growled. “We’ll run a couple of strands and use battens between the posts that are still up. That should hold until morning when it will have to come down anyway in order to get the car out.” He looked at Stoner, “I guess you had no idea she was coming?”

  Stoner grunted an affirmation. “When have we ever had any idea what Erin planned? Hell, she came out of the womb feet first just to be different.”

  Carter, who had only been with Richardson Homestead for the last four years asked, “That young woman is your daughter, sir? I thought you had only Evan and Tabby.”

  Stoner sighed, then explained, “Erin is Evan’s younger sister. Tabby is their younger half sister. I’d better call Catherine and prepare her. No. On second thought, I don’t want to break this to her over the phone.”

  Sam turned away with a frown and began anchoring the first strand of barbwire. In his mind, he saw again the brave little nine-year-old he’d met so long ago and the way she’d stood up to her father’s chewing out even with the broken arm that had to have hurt like hell. Almost eighteen years later and nothing seemed to have changed. To Stoner, Erin was still a problem to be handled and hidden.

  Sam’s mouth tightened. He wanted to punch Stoner, or at the very least knock some sense into the man. Erin wasn’t a problem. She was Stoner’s daughter. Sam hammered the wire staple with enough force to anchor it in one swing. He was just as mad at himself as he was at Stoner. He had treated her the same way the last time she’d shown up. For a few minutes last fall, as he took her back to her parents’ house, he’d gotten a glimpse through the attitude and seen the loneliness she so successfully hid. Something inside him had responded immediately, just as he’d always responded to her, but there’d been no chance to explore it before she had once again fled. Now she was back, and he had to wonder why.

  Sam hammered the last fence staple in place, then hefted his wire and fence tools. “Thanks, gentlemen. That should hold everything until morning.”

  “No problem,” Stoner’s foreman replied. “’Night.”

  Carter climbed back into his truck, started the engine, and turned around, saluting Stoner and Sam as he drove back down the road to the caretaker’s house where he and his young wife lived. Sam and Stoner walked side-by-side back to the truck without saying a word. Sam tossed the fence tools and the wire into the bed before opening the back door to check on Erin.

  She was still there. Sam refused to examine why it mattered so much to him. His heart beat in a heavier rhythm as he took stock of her. She was curled into a ball on the back seat, her shapely little jean clad derriere pointed right at him. He pulled his glove off and checked her pulse. Steadier than his, that was for sure. He frowned when she
didn’t stir and looked across the seat to Stoner.

  “She’s always been a heavy sleeper,” he said.

  Stoner climbed in the passenger side in back and sat next to his daughter. It surprised Sam, but then Stoner was a changed man, so perhaps things would be different for Erin this time. Sam hoped so. The thought made his gut unknot a hitch.

  “Erin, honey!” Stoner said. “Sit up. Let’s see that head.”

  She struggled to open her eyes, blinking owlishly. Her brow furrowed as her glance went from side to side as though not sure where she was. When she finally focused on him, he saw no recognition in their depths. Sam wasn’t sure if it was from the pot, the injury, or sheer exhaustion. She looked like hell.

  “Think she needs to go to the hospital?” Sam asked.

  Stoner shot him a meaningful look. “Your house is closer. Can we take her there for now? I still have to tell Catherine. It will be enough of a shock for her that Erin’s here, but I hate to show up with her in this shape.” Stoner’s expression pleaded, and that made Sam very uncomfortable. Stoner Richardson didn’t beg for anything.

  Sam frowned as he looked at Erin. No hospital—because she didn’t need it or because Stoner didn’t want the embarrassment? Sam clenched his jaw, trying to leave his personal feelings out of it.

  The cut wasn’t bad. It looked more like a friction burn, probably from the airbag, so chances were she didn’t have a concussion.

  “She’s your daughter, Stoner.”

  “You think I don’t know that? You think this is something new? It’s happened so often before, Sam, all through high school. We tried rehab…shit!” Stoner’s jaw worked as he stared out the window, his fist clenching and unclenching.

  Sam sighed. Stoner’s struggle to handle Erin’s abrupt and unexpected appearance was obvious, and it made Sam’s heart ache. As much as he knew having anything to do with Erin would be like volunteering to step into a snake pit, he couldn’t stop himself. He’d never been able to when it came to anything having to do with her.

  “Yeah. Stay here,” he finally told Stoner. “I’ll see if she has a suitcase.”

  Sprinting back to the car, he found a small purse and a duffel bag in the trunk. Not many clothes if she planned to stay any length of time, but from what he understood, Erin rarely stayed anywhere long. From sporadic e-mails to her parents, they knew she’d bounced from job to job in the islands…even working as a hostess at a topless club for a while. Sam slammed the trunk with unnecessary force.

  Better not to go there. Thinking about her without clothes would only lead to more trouble than he wanted.

  When they reached the farmhouse, Sam carried her in and laid her on the couch in his den. The wood stove still sent out waves of heat. Stoner was right behind him with her purse and her bag. Seeing Erin in his house brought back memories Sam didn’t want to think about…erotic memories he’d worked hard to put behind him with an astounding lack of success and a barn-full of guilt. She could stay for one night. That was it. Then she had to go. Erin in his house was more temptation than Sam could handle.

  Stoner looked at him with steady, gray eyes. “I owe you, Sam. Catherine was so distraught over what happened last fall. I don’t want to see her hurt again.” His gaze slid to Erin, and Sam saw the shadows there, but whatever Stoner’s true feelings were, he kept locked inside. Maybe that was part of the problem. Erin and Stoner had a lot in common. Everything that mattered, everything important, they locked deep inside, unable or unwilling to allow themselves to appear vulnerable.

  Stoner looked at Erin’s pale face. “You want me to stay? Help get her cleaned up?”

  Sam shook his head wearily. “I’ll do it. Take my truck and go back to Catherine. Call me in the morning.”

  Stoner put his hand on Sam’s shoulder. “I owe you.”

  “Yeah. So you’ve said.”

  After the door shut behind Erin’s father, Sam looked at his uninvited guest and sighed. He felt like he’d been picking up after this particular Richardson for years. He left her sprawled on the couch while he stalked off in search of his first aid kit. She was awake when he returned but, for once, not ready to start a fight. She leaned against him limply while he cleaned the scrape on her head. It wasn’t big, but she did have a bump to go with it. She watched him from somber, blue-gray eyes. After a couple of minutes of her almost unblinking stare, he arched one brow at her.

  “If you have a question, Erin, I wish you’d just ask it.”

  “Where am I?” she asked.

  “My house. It was closer. Your dad thought it would be better for you to spend the night here.”

  A flush of anger quickly replaced the flash of hurt he’d seen in her face, but then she blinked, masking her expression. Long lashes dropped as she shifted her gaze away. Her eyes had always been the chink in her protective armor because they mirrored what she truly felt. Sam wanted to grab her, make her look at him, and for once tell him what she really felt.

  “I see.” Her mouth twisted with a cynicism he hated to witness. “Am I supposed to pay you for the fence while I spend the night? Is that the deal?”

  Anger burned like acid inside him, but he wasn’t sure exactly who he was angry with—her, himself, or her father. What he did know was he hated the hurt that lingered in those big eyes of hers, and he knew one surefire way of getting rid of it.

  “I don’t work that way. You might end up paying me for my fence, but it won’t be on your back. The fence cost a lot more money than one night between your thighs is worth, baby.”

  The haunted look disappeared and fury replaced it. She twisted away from him. “You prick! You over-sized gorilla. Take your freaking hands off me.”

  He’d take her anger over her hurt. He was big enough to handle the fury, but he had no idea what to do with the wounded woman lurking behind it. Sam stood, set the first aid kit aside, and stared her down. “Let me have your purse.”

  She clutched it to her. “Why?”

  “Unless you plan to spend the next little while in jail, hand me your purse, Erin. And tell me what you’re on.”

  She tossed the purse at him. “Just a little weed.”

  “If it were anyone else, I’d say you need to be at the hospital, but you’re a Richardson. Y’all have hard heads.”

  “I might have a concussion.”

  Sam arched a brow as he dumped the contents of her purse on the table and began going through them. He found the pot, the papers, her lighter, her stash of ecstasy, and the Quaaludes. How the devil had she gotten through customs with this stuff? It was a freaking pharmacy in here. Finally he held up an oblong package with pills. “What are these?”

  “Birth control pills,” Erin snapped defiantly.

  Sam’s hand tightened. What was he getting uptight about? She was nothing to him. He was nothing to her. She wasn’t a kid. She was almost twenty-seven. Had he expected she would continue to hero worship him? Save herself for him? She’d had a teenage crush on him, but she’d obviously moved on. Maybe it was time for him to do the same. How much of a fool was he? “I don’t see a prescription.”

  “It was on the box, not the compact.”

  He put the birth control pills in a different pile. When he was through, he picked up all the drugs, opened the door on the woodstove, and tossed them in.

  Erin leaped off the couch. “What the hell are you doing? Do you have any idea how much all that shit cost?”

  Sam glared at her over his shoulder. “I don’t give a flying feline, and what I’m doing is saving your cute little butt from jail time, idiot. Darn it! I’m the County Sheriff. You can’t have this stuff, especially not in my home.”

  She lurched toward the woodstove, staggered, and started to slip sideways. He caught her as she fell.

  “Sammy?” her voice was thready and frightened. Big, blue-gray eyes stared at him, and again her defenses went down for an instant. That was all it took to turn him into a marshmallow.

 
“It’s okay, baby. You’re okay.” His throat tightened. Maybe he did need to keep an eye out for a concussion. She was always so fiercely self-sufficient, wanting no one, needing no one, that it hurt his heart to see her weakened. He knew the lessons she’d learned years ago. He’d been an unfortunate part of more than one of them. He knew deep down she wouldn’t want to lean on anyone. She would see it as a mistake because her experience had shown her that, in the end, everyone else would let her down—even family. Especially family.

  “Lie down, Erin.” Sam looked at her paper white face with real concern. Then he began to notice other things. The five earrings in her left ear and—Jesus H. Christ—was that an eyebrow piercing? “For heaven’s sake,” he ground out roughly. “Why the devil have you stuck all those holes in yourself?”

  “It’s a personal statement,” she flashed, color starting to return to her fair skin.

  “Of what?” he asked. “That you’d prefer life as Swiss cheese?”

  “No… That uptight parents and nosy neighbors need to back the hell off. It’s my life, my body.” Her eyes narrowed spitefully. “I’ve got one in my navel too. Wanna see?”

  Sam frowned with the memory, one that still aroused him. “I saw that one last fall.” He saw the look on her face. She wanted to shock him, make him squirm, make him lose his temper. It had always been like this.

  “Then how about my tattoos?”

  He quirked a brow. He didn’t remember seeing any tattoos when she’d shown up unexpectedly at Tabby’s art showing, and she’d only had the barest essentials covered. Even though he knew better, he still baited her. “What would you do if I said yes?”

  Erin smiled wickedly and teased the snap on her jeans. “I’ll show you mine if you’ll show me yours.”

  “For heaven’s sake!” Sam spun away from her. He had to. The sight of her finger sliding along the waistband of jeans was making him hard, making him want things he shouldn’t.

  “Have some respect for yourself,” he said.

  Silence reigned behind him. Suddenly, Sam knew he’d gone too far, hit her where she was the most vulnerable. That had always been her problem. As tough as she might seem, Erin had no self-esteem, and he had never understood why. He turned to apologize. She had her back to him and had gone still and silent, but he could see from her stiff posture that he’d managed to hurt her.