Erin's Way

by Laura Browning

Past caring now, she walked toward him and saw his eyes widen even more. She laughed and walked right past to her closet. She pulled on a skin tight knit dress that hugged every curve of her body and ended around mid-thigh.

  “How’s that?” she challenged. “That about fits your image of me, doesn’t it?”

  “You can’t mean to wear that to dinner with your parents.”

  She stared at him hostilely. “Why not? It’s what you all expected anyway. But Sam, what I don’t have on underneath can just be our little secret.” She stepped into high-heeled pumps. “And you can think about it all through dinner Mr. Can-But-Won’t.”

  * * * *

  Stoner ground his teeth when Erin waltzed into the room with a glowering Sam behind her. He absolutely would not rise to the bait Erin was throwing out. Evan looked at his sister sardonically.

  “Ah,” her brother drawled. “Now I see why you were late. It must have taken extra time to squeeze everything inside such a small amount of material. Nice dress.”

  Erin slanted him nothing more than a scathing glance. Her eyes glittered. Stoner knew that look. She was spoiling for a fight.

  Catherine frowned and looked to him for help. He caught the way Sam glared at Erin and decided he would simply watch the two of them. Seldom had he ever seen the taciturn Sam Barnes so bent out of shape, and never over a woman. One look at Erin’s expression made it clear she was deliberately trying to rile the big sheriff. Someday, Stoner thought, when things settled down some, he would show her the pictures of her great grandmother, a woman who had been on the wild side, even for the roaring twenties, and looked almost exactly like Erin.

  But Erin was predictable for no one on this night. While Sam took notes, she obligingly gave them everything she knew about Andre Delacroix, his family, and the trade that transpired on aboard the Sprite.

  “There’s one problem,” she said as she prowled the study after dinner, her hands fluttering over things, then moving on to something else. “The Sprite got blown up last night.”

  “How do you know this?” Evan asked sharply.

  She paused. “Rick sent me e-mail. He was her captain, but he and another crew member had gone to a nearby boat to play poker. It was a last minute arrangement. Otherwise he and Matty would have been there too. Stan and Roger were. Their bodies have already been found, and Rick and Matty are listed as missing and presumed dead.”

  “Obviously, they’re not,” Stoner said dryly, his keen eyes taking in the agitation she struggled so hard to hide. There was just a slight tightness around her eyes to give her away.

  She laughed, but it was brittle. “Oh no. They’re in Miami sampling the nightlife. They decided it would be in their best interests to disappear for a while.”

  “And you know this from their e-mail?” Evan continued.

  Erin stopped to look at him over her shoulder. “Do I get to cross-examine once you’re done with your questioning? If you must know, I called Rick once I saw the e-mail to make sure he and Matty were both okay. They are my friends.” Her glare raked Sam, clearly letting him know he wasn’t among that group, and then moved on along with her graceful, nervous movements around the room.

  Stoner looked at Evan and Sam. The latter rolled his eyes and reluctantly nodded his head. Stoner cleared his throat, drawing Erin’s attention. “Honey, we think it might be safer for you if you moved in with Sam for the time being. No one looking for you would think to look at his farm. The guesthouse is…”

  “Too close for you to feel safe from me, Daddy?” Erin whispered tightly.

  “No. Honey…” But he could see he had lost her again. Her face wore that remote, frozen look he’d seen so often through her teenage years.

  Erin turned to look at her mother. “Mama?”

  “We’re just trying to do what’s best for you.” Catherine kept her tone carefully neutral.

  Erin’s head snapped back. She turned a hostile gaze on Evan and Jenny. “So are you all here to help push me out the door in case I don’t want to leave peacefully?”

  “Erin,” Jenny began.

  She spun on Sam. “What do you get out of this? No, never mind. I don’t want to know.” She glared at all of them. “I’ll go pack. There’s no point in prolonging this, is there?”

  “Erin…” Stoner began, but she cut him off.

  “I dared to trust you, Daddy,” she hissed. “For once in my life, I thought you meant it—that you would keep me safe, but some things never change. You and Mother should have quit with Evan, because you sure as hell never had time for me. You were always off at some fundraisers, or campaigning here and there while I got shuttled from babysitters to nannies and from one school to another. Let me guess, Daddy. That first night when you discovered I’d come back and you shunted me off on Sam, did you and Mama discuss how you could keep me from being a disruption in your life?”

  Stoner was a master at hiding what he was thinking. Catherine too, but not that good. Erin’s bitter laughter let him know in no uncertain terms that she’d caught the glance he’d exchanged with Catherine. With one more hostile glance at all of them, Erin stalked from the room.

  “Well,” Evan said, his mouth thin. “That ended about as badly as it could have.”

  Jenny glared at them. “You have no idea what or who she is, and I can’t tell you a damned thing because what she told me was done in confidence. If you ever get her to open up before she self-destructs, all of you will be so ashamed.”

  Jenny rushed from the room after Erin, leaving everyone else to stare at each other open-mouthed.

  A quarter of an hour later, Jenny returned and addressed Sam. “She’s waiting for you in your truck. I couldn’t get her to come back in.”

  Stoner’s hands clenched in his pockets. One afternoon. Was that all he would get of the Erin he remembered from when she had been just a little girl? Now he wouldn’t even be able to see her. “I want to see her before you leave,” he said abruptly. He stalked out to Sam’s truck where Erin sat in the passenger seat and stared stiffly ahead of her. She rolled down the window, but her eyes looked beyond him rather than at him. “Erin,” Stoner pleaded quietly. “Please, honey, don’t go like this. I just want you to be safe.”

  She looked at him with eyes that were empty. “Bullshit. Good-bye, Daddy.” She rolled the window back up. Sam’s eyes met Stoner’s over the roof of the truck.

  “I’ll keep her safe, Senator,” Sam vowed. Stoner nodded and walked back inside the big brick home, his heart heavy, though he still felt he was making the right decision in sending her to Sam.

  * * * *

  Sam climbed into the driver’s seat and glanced at Erin. She kept her face slightly averted and her hands clenched on her knees. When they reached his house, he got out, grabbed her duffel bag, and her laptop case. Erin followed him without a word as he took her things up the stairs to the room that had once been the master suite. It was large and had a bath attached, similar to Sam’s room on the first floor.

  Erin looked around. “If you’ll tell me where to find the bedding, I’ll make the bed up.”

  “I’ll get it,” Sam said.

  When he returned, she took it from him. “Thank you. If you don’t mind, I’ll do this myself and go to bed. I guess I’ll see you in the morning.”

  “Erin, we’re not done. We have some things we have to talk about.”

  “Like what?”

  “Like why you deliberately ruined the papers I left you.”

  “I told you I wasn’t filling that shit out. It’s done now anyway, so what’s the big deal?”

  “The big deal is I have to be able to trust you.”

  “So I won’t do it again. Problem solved.”

  She started to turn away, but he grabbed her arm. He felt her freeze, almost as if she feared he was going to hurt her. Sam forced himself to gentle his touch and his voice as he said, “Not quite. I left explicit instructions for what was to be done with my livestock this morn
ing and you paid absolutely no attention.”

  For just a second he saw something like shame flash across her expression; then hostility replaced it. “How the hell was I supposed to read that chicken scratch of yours? If you have instructions, just tell me.”

  Sam ground his molars. She was the most stubborn, infuriating woman. “I’ll do one better. Be out at the barn by six. I’ll show you exactly what I want done. I can’t afford mistakes with my Herefords, Erin.”

  “Fine.” She turned her back to him. “I’m tired, Sam. Good night.”

  And that was the most he heard from her over the next two days. He’d shown her what he wanted done, and that was that. She did her work. She cooked him breakfast and left dinner for him, but in the evenings, by the time he got home, she had already disappeared upstairs. He knew she spent a lot of time on the Internet. When she’d failed to answer his knock the first night, Sam had opened the door a crack and seen her working on the computer, earphones over her ears and a calculator in her hand. He wondered what absorbed her so completely, but she was so remote he couldn’t find an opportunity to ask where it wouldn’t seem like he was spying on her.

  Thursday, he pulled in the driveway to see his truck sitting there, but the house was dark. Seeing a light on in the barn, he opened the door to find that two of his Hereford heifers now had their first calves suckling at their sides. From the tackroom, he heard some public radio talk show. Erin was curled up on a couple of bales of hay sound asleep with a horse blanket thrown over her. She looked pale and exhausted with shadows beneath her eyes. On the ground next to her he saw pulling chains. He looked at the two healthy calves and wondered if she’d pulled one or both, then marveled that she had done it by herself.

  He let her sleep while he checked the rest of the animals, then came back to the calves. Both cows and calves appeared to be just fine and everything had been cleaned with fresh bedding added. Sam looked again at Erin and rubbed his chest. For all she wanted everyone to believe she was selfish and irresponsible, he had seen how she worked her butt off on his farm, and how conscientious she was. He shook his head. It was like watching two different women, and he wondered if he would ever see the real Erin.

  He thought about what Jenny said to all of them. Just what secrets did this tiny temperamental tornado, harbor?

  When he took the horse blanket off, he noticed that her coveralls were stained with blood and fluids from the births. Sam ignored it as he bent and lifted her into his arms.

  “I can walk,” she protested in a groggy voice.

  “I know you can,” he said softly, “you just don’t need to prove it to me right now.”

  He set her on a chair in the mudroom and took off her boots, then unzipped the coverall. He swallowed thickly when he saw the bra that was little more than a scrap of lace and a pair of panties that were barely big enough to sneeze at.

  “Wh-what are you doing?” she mumbled.

  “Getting your filthy barn clothes off. Do you want me to put you in the bathroom or the bed?” She struggled to focus. Even as he watched, she started to drift off to sleep once more. He smiled. “Bed, I think.”

  Sam set her on the edge of her bed and found the oversized shirt he knew she wore and slipped it over her head. She gazed at him now with that haunted, hungry look in her eyes that made his heart pound and left him feeling out of breath and unsettled. She’d always tugged at his heart strings, from the first time he’d seen her.

  “Are they both okay?”

  He knew what she asked. “A little bull calf and a little heifer. You did good, Erin.”

  She smiled as she snuggled into the pillow. “Not stupid. I figured it out. Saw the pictures.”

  “Go to sleep, baby,” he whispered and stroked her short hair.

  As he started to leave the room, he saw her laptop was still on and hooked to her cellphone. He decided to power everything down for her. When he moved the mouse, pictures of pulling a calf appeared. He smiled at her resourcefulness in finding out what she needed to know. As he moved the mouse over the text, he heard noise coming through the earphones. Sam picked them up and glanced over his shoulder to make sure she still slept before putting them over his ears. He clicked the back button. In every program he opened, whatever he highlighted with his cursor gave him an audio prompt. That was interesting, almost as if the computer was set up for someone who was blind.

  Sam frowned. He’d wondered before if she had vision problems, but he’d never noticed Erin having any difficulty with any outside tasks, in fact, with anything other than reading.

  His hand hovered over the mouse as images came back to him of a little girl who was constantly on the move and constantly in trouble at home and at school. He remembered her frowning concentration over the Sunday comics, then how she ignored his note to move the livestock, and finally the way she intentionally spilled coffee on the forms he wanted her to complete—then tried to give him that haughty attitude of how she wasn’t filling out any forms.

  Not because she wouldn’t, he decided, but because she couldn’t. Because she couldn’t read. There could be no other logical conclusion. The idea floored him…and shamed him.

  Sam closed the Internet and looked at the programs on the laptop. He really shouldn’t be snooping, but he needed to know. If he was going to keep her safe, he needed to know what she was hiding.

  Her computer contained all the usual programs he’d expect, plus a couple he found interesting. One was the reading and voice recognition writing program that was incorporated into everything on the computer, and the other was a remedial reading program. When he opened it, he saw she’d been working in it.

  Sam closed the programs and left the room. He felt a twist of guilt. She would be beyond furious if she knew what he’d discovered. Merciful heaven! It boggled his mind to think of how she had gotten through school. Just functioning day-to-day had to be a challenge to whatever coping skills she’d developed. He slipped down to his room, changed into jeans and a sweatshirt, and wandered into the kitchen to fix something to eat. He missed the meal she would have had waiting for him.

  How did she learn recipes? As he thought of all the things her obviously severe reading disability affected, he was more and more amazed at what she had accomplished. The most amazing thing of all was how she’d kept it a secret. He wondered if that was what Jenny had meant.

  Erin thought she was stupid. She said it often enough. Had said it just this evening. Only this time that she was not stupid. He shook his head. She had figured out how to pull the calf from the pictures.

  He wanted to wake her and ask her how she’d done it. Then he realized something else. As closely as she guarded this secret, she would be humiliated if she realized he knew. Between her and Stoner, he had never seen two more stiff-necked, proud people.

  He checked on her before he called it a night, and she still slept soundly. As he studied her face, serene and relaxed in sleep, he wondered just what other secrets she had.

  Sometime in the middle of the night, he thought he heard talking, but he’d already discovered that Erin was a restless sleeper who often talked in her sleep, so he ignored it. He awoke the next morning with a vague feeling that it was later than usual. When he came out of the bedroom, he found homemade cinnamon buns still warm in the oven. He wolfed them down along with a mug of coffee, pulled on his coveralls and boots, and headed for the barn.

  She wasn’t there. The animals had all obviously been taken care of, but there was no sign of Erin anywhere. He stomped back out into the cold rain and saw faint tire tracks. Beginning to feel alarmed, Sam strode into the house and bolted upstairs. Her computer was up and he accessed her e-mail, relieved to find she’d left herself logged in.

  Hi, Sweet Cheeks! Did what you suggested. We’re at the motel next to the truck plaza. Sorry you got the parental boot. Pick you up Saturday AM, and we’ll have a lost weekend together just like old times. Nothin’ like a girl pillow! Matty sends his love.—Ri
ck

  A lost weekend? Had she taken off to be with her lovers? Sam’s fists clenched at his sides and he ground his teeth wordlessly. His first inclination was to run after her, but what right did he have? She had done her work. She wasn’t his prisoner. She was an adult, and he had absolutely no claim on her.

  The problem was that at the moment, the need to yank her back home, put his own brand on her, and never let her leave again overwhelmed him. Instead she was with two men. In a hotel room. Sam knew that just as soon as he could get some support, he would go after her, claim or no claim.

  Chapter 5

  Rick and Matty showed up just after dawn. Erin hugged them both and happily hopped into the back seat. This was just the break she’d needed. After breakfast at the truck stop, they drove back to Rick and Matty’s room. While Erin sat cross-legged on the bed, Rick lay with his head in her lap, and Matty stretched out beside her.

  “So are you seriously playing farmer Bob’s wife?” Rick asked in amusement as he passed the joint he’d lit up over to Matty. He took a deep toke and handed it to Erin. She had no desire for it, but it was there, and she took a big hit before passing it off again. She finally exhaled the smoke, already feeling a faint buzz.

  “You know me, Rick,” she said with a giggle. “No sex, but I look after the farm and cook the meals.”

  Matty shuddered. “That is just too domesticated sounding for the original wild child.” He rolled over onto his stomach and propped his face in his hands. He was such a girl. “Come with us, baby. We’ll have a great time, and you don’t have to worry about some man hands on you. They can have me instead.” He laughed.

  Erin blinked at him. Was that eye shadow on his lids or just her imagination? Matty always had been a bit more out there than the rest of them. While most of the crew could pass as just regular guys, Matty was a real queen. Still, he was sweet and wide-eyed enough that he was usually the darling of any older women on board. They surely knew he was gay, and maybe that was part of the reason they loved him. They could simply be themselves with no pressure.