Rancher at Risk

by Barbara White Daille

  “Things are going just fine,” he said evenly.

  Ellamae tilted her head and looked at him as if she thought otherwise.

  The judge rested his hands on the table as if ready to pronounce his sentence. “Good. Caleb tells me you and Lianne are coming along fine, too. With the scouts and the school and all.”

  “Yes, we are.” Except for that last “and all.” But Caleb couldn’t know everything that had gone on out at the ranch. If he had, he would long ago have sent his foreman packing.

  “You haven’t come before my bench yet, so I reckon you’re keeping yourself out of trouble.”

  Now, that was a statement he didn’t trust himself to answer.

  “Though you remember I told you,” the judge went on, “you were welcome to show up at my office anytime—as long as you came without a lawyer and brought a clean conscience with you.”

  “Judge.” Ellamae shook her head.

  The judge continued to look at him. “Since you haven’t seen fit to stop by, I’m wondering if you might not be feeling as well washed as you ought.”

  Beneath the table, he curled his fingers into fists, trying to steady himself and keep unwanted thoughts away. Damn, even his own father, strict enough when he’d had reason, had never made him feel this uneasy.

  But he knew why. It wasn’t the way the judge’s blue eyes homed in on him. It wasn’t Ellamae’s calculating expression. It wasn’t even the pressure of trying to think how he would answer the judge.

  What worried him was knowing how he had responded in other situations. And realizing how heavily that knowledge had begun to weigh on his conscience.

  * * *

  RYAN SHOVED OPEN the door of the Double S. He’d finished his coffee, eaten a few chips and made his excuses to get away. He sure didn’t want to stick around long enough to see which lucky man Lianne had gotten all dolled up for.

  As he went down the sidewalk, headed toward his truck, he saw the lucky man anyway.

  Phil, the scoutmaster, stood leaning against her Camry, his attention on the cell phone in his hands. His thumbs moved over the keys. As Ryan approached, he looked up.

  “Took the night off?”

  The man nodded. “Yeah. I’m waiting for Lianne.”

  “Haven’t seen her.” But I damned well will.

  He nodded and kept going. The coffee he’d drunk churned in his gut. The chips he’d eaten sat like lumps of lead. The thought of the man waiting for Lianne, getting ready to have supper with her and then going who knows where with her afterward, all set him to pounding the sidewalk.

  It didn’t take long until he saw the sign with the big white H. He gritted his teeth and consciously slowed his pace. No sense barging in like a madman. He’d never get beyond the lobby, where a white-haired volunteer with a grandmotherly smile sat at the information desk. She would be calling for orderlies to strap him down and doctors to sedate him.

  He didn’t want to be sedated. He wasn’t sure what he wanted, though. He just knew he needed to talk to Lianne before she arrived at the Double S and started her date with Scoutmaster Phil.

  He smiled at Grandma and asked for directions to Kayla Robertson’s room in the maternity ward. Third floor, left wing, four doors down.

  Two doors along, his footsteps slowed again. Three doors and he came to a halt. He could see the observation window of the fourth room and the women inside it. The new mama, propped up in bed. Another grandmotherly type, sitting on a chair. And Lianne, standing beside them both. While the three women talked, Lianne and her sister signed. He watched their hands fly and their mouths move and, since the door to the room was closed, he heard nothing.

  It felt like watching television with the volume off.

  It felt like being deaf himself.

  He wasn’t sure he needed to know the topic of a conversation among three women in a hospital room roughly twenty-four hours after one of them had given birth. He didn’t like the idea of going into the room and breaking up that conversation. And now he didn’t want to talk to Lianne at all.

  He couldn’t think of what to say to her, except to beg her not to date another man.

  But he thought of what she’d said about control.

  He turned and went back the way he had come and waited for the elevator.

  Now that momentum wasn’t pushing him, he had time to realize where he stood. Panic rushed through him. He hadn’t been in a hospital since he’d faced that sad-eyed surgeon.

  At the first floor, the doors slid open. Before he could move, a man stepped inside.

  “Ryan.” Sam Robertson grinned at him. “Come see my son.” He pushed the button for the third floor, and the doors slid closed again.

  Sam didn’t ask what he was doing in the hospital. He was too pumped up about his boy, listing all the information a proud daddy wanted to share. Name. Inches. Pounds and ounces. Date and time. A full head of hair and the proper number of fingers and toes.

  Ryan nodded, taking everything in, automatically pairing every detail with one of his own.

  “He’s in the nursery right now,” Sam informed him, “but he’ll go in with Kayla again soon to stay the night.”

  Once off the elevator, they took the right wing, away from the hallway he had walked down before. His steps slowed. He lagged behind Sam.

  He didn’t want to look into the room filled with tiny blanket-wrapped babies or to remember the thrill of finding the crib that held his son.

  He didn’t want to believe he would never see Billy or Jan again.

  He didn’t want to accept that he had lost his family and there was nothing he could do to bring them back.

  Chapter Nineteen

  Ryan shook hands with so many people before the start of the council meeting, he lost track.

  “Well, Mr. Molloy,” said a man’s voice behind him. He turned to see the judge smiling at him. “I knew I’d see you in my courtroom eventually, one way or another.”

  Ellamae came up to them. “Where’s Lianne?” she asked him in wide-eyed innocence.

  “She’ll be along,” he said. Or so he hoped. He hadn’t seen her all day.

  Last night he’d gone to bed early. He didn’t want to know what time she got home from her date.

  Today he couldn’t keep from stopping in at the house from time to time to look for her. But with the scouts gone and her sister and the new baby sent home from the hospital, it didn’t surprise him not to see her on the ranch at all.

  “Well, look who’s here,” Ellamae said. Her tone held about as much innocence as her expression.

  He followed her gaze. Lianne stood with Caleb and Tess just inside the doorway.

  His heart gave a dull thud as he started toward them.

  Lianne looked across the room and met his gaze. She said something to Tess, and the two women moved away. Forcing himself not to falter, he walked up to Caleb.

  Ben Sawyer joined them. “Just letting you know you’re last up for the evening.”

  “No problem,” Ryan said, glad Caleb couldn’t know how close he’d come to showing up unprepared. Too eager to see Lianne again, he’d gone halfway out the door before remembering her laptop and the notes she had made for the presentation.

  The pounding of a gavel sounded, Ben called the meeting to order and those folks not already seated filed into the courtroom benches.

  He saw Lianne slip into a seat beside Tess. He quickly headed in that direction to take the last space in the row. She had done a good job of avoiding him and they weren’t in a position to talk now, but he could at least have the pleasure of sitting next to her and smelling her perfume.

  She had done a thorough job with the prep work for the presentation, too, laying out facts and figures, providing info about the school and its curriculum, and explaining the employment opportunities and revenue the ranch would provide for the residents of Flagman’s Folly. A damned thorough job.

  She had also taken the task beyond what Caleb had first laid out, including inviting a co
uple of the counselors they’d hired to come talk with folks after the meeting. And during the week before the official opening date, she had scheduled an open house for the townsfolk to tour the school.

  She was more than just a pencil pusher. He smiled at the thought, recalling the time she had used her pencil to curl a strand of her hair and had left that smudge on her face.

  Along with her business background, she was a people person, too. He gave her credit for finding that balance. He gave her credit for a lot of things, although he’d never said so to her.

  As the meeting wore on, he kept half an ear on the activity. Beside him Lianne sat leaning slightly forward. Her hair tumbled over her shoulders and down her back. Smooth and silky and tempting. But he managed to keep his hands to himself. She wouldn’t want him touching her. Or doing anything else.

  He had thought she was crazy for going off by herself, riding angry and at breakneck speed. And it was a crazy act, setting her up for the possibility of injury to herself or her mount. But when it came to an actual danger, when it came to watching her free her leg and walk off the bridge, she had been right all along. She could take care of herself.

  All day long the last words she had said to him yesterday morning had rung in his head.

  I don’t want anything to do with any man who thinks I’m so useless I can’t function without his help.

  He would like to tell her he hadn’t thought that—not for a minute. But how could she believe him when that was exactly how he’d behaved? Not intentionally, not even realizing it until she had made her point.

  Late as usual, he finally got it.

  He looked at Lianne, so close beside him and yet so damned far away. And he knew he wouldn’t have to lose her to an accident the way he had lost his family. He was going to lose her because she couldn’t deal with a man who wanted to control her life.

  * * *

  WHEN BEN SAWYER announced the presentation as the final item on the night’s agenda, Lianne sagged on the bench in relief.

  She had struggled not to look at Ryan, not to turn toward him, not to lean into him, not to breathe deeply enough to smell the aftershave scenting his freshly shaven jaw. Not to engage any of her senses.

  But she couldn’t avoid feeling the heat of him, and it was almost more than she could bear. When they had made love, he had told her he wanted to warm her all over. He’d done that then with his hands and mouth and body. He did it now simply by being by her side.

  She had wanted to forget him, had tried hard to put him out of her mind. She had buried herself in work, dated other men, spent as much time as she could away from the ranch. None of it had taken him from her thoughts.

  Beside her now, he rose to go up to the front of the room. She felt an instant chill from the loss of his presence, but a chill she needed to remind her of all the reasons they couldn’t be together.

  Her heart went out to him over the loss of his family. She had wanted to help him, to make things better, to take his pain away. But just as she couldn’t fix being deaf, she couldn’t fix this for him. She wasn’t broken. And he still needed to work through his grief.

  It had taken her years to learn what she had tried to tell him. Some things happen for no reason.

  No matter how much she had wanted those words to help him, they were only words. Empty words, as he had said about the accident report. He would have to find the truth in them—to find his own reality—himself.

  Her reality had been accepting the love of her family and fighting for a place in both her worlds, hearing and deaf.

  His would be to accept that his questions might never be answered. And with that acceptance, finally, to find the strength to overcome his loss.

  He stood at the front of the room with her folder of notes and her laptop on the table. The distance between her and that table had given her trouble reading the council members.

  She could read Ryan’s lips more easily because she knew them and loved them.

  That was a new reality for her to face now, too.

  She loved him. She sympathized with him. She understood him. Seeing his struggle made her understand why he felt the need to control everything around him, why he wouldn’t trust in her ability to take care of herself. But understanding him was one thing, accepting that control something else.

  At the table, he set the laptop and the unopened file folder of notes aside. After all her hard work, all her preparation, he wasn’t going to use her material. A week ago, a day ago, she would have felt angry. Incensed. Now she felt only sad.

  Blinking, she tried to focus on reading him.

  “I’m sure you folks in Flagman’s Folly will be proud to have this school in your town,” he said. “I know I’m proud to be associated with it. But I can’t take credit for the idea—much as I would like to.” He looked around the room, and she could see people returning his smile. “Instead, let me introduce you to the person who does deserve the credit, who’s done most of the work for this endeavor and who’s here tonight to tell you all about it. That’s the manager of this project, Lianne Ward.”

  Now she saw everyone around her applauding. She saw Ryan’s wry smile, this time just for her.

  He returned to stand at the end of the row.

  She sat, too stunned to move.

  With a small bow to her, he made a sweeping gesture toward the table.

  Her heart pounded and her hands trembled and her breath fluttered in her chest. She knew what he had done. His wry smile offered an apology, and his gesture turned control of the presentation over to her. She didn’t think she could ever love him any more than she did right now.

  The strained look around his eyes said he thought she hadn’t moved because she felt uneasy about speaking to the crowd. Yet he didn’t return to the front of the room.

  Instead, he smiled, pointed to her and brought his fists down in front of him.

  You can.

  * * *

  HE THOUGHT THE evening would never end, and he wanted it to, soon, only because he would finally get Lianne alone again.

  He sat through her entire presentation and then afterward when she took questions from the crowd. And the folks of Flagman’s Folly were one heck of a chatty bunch.

  He stood through more introductions to townsfolk, then conversations with the counselors she had hired.

  He agonized through another endless span of time while she circled the room to say her goodbyes.

  And he heard her praises sung by everyone who came near him. Tess and Caleb. Ben and his wife. Sam Robertson, who had attended the meeting alone and made his good news the first item on the evening’s agenda. Roselynn and Ellamae, who looked at him with expressions of teary-eyed happiness and smug satisfaction, respectively. And last but not least, Judge Baylor, who had taken to acting as host for the evening.

  Needless to say, it was late by the time they left Town Hall. The air had grown heavy, and from far away came the rumble of thunder. He had heard thunderstorms in New Mexico could be both vicious and deadly and hoped this one would pass them by.

  He followed the Camry out to the ranch. Distant lightning flashed and crackled. If he were a superstitious man, the sight and sound would have given him bad vibes.

  As it was, with every mile they traveled, he felt his spirits plunge further. Lianne hadn’t looked his way once after the presentation, hadn’t made eye contact with him during it and, worst of all, hadn’t even blinked an eye when he’d tried to make his apology and to give her his support.

  She was so good at reading folks, she had to have read him. Her lack of response made him think she wasn’t interested in what he had to offer. And he couldn’t blame her.

  Too little, too late.

  That didn’t let him off the hook for other things he needed to say.

  By the time they arrived back at the house, jagged streaks of lightning flashed in the sky past the western ridge and thunder followed, close enough to indicate the bad weather was on its way.

  At th
e back porch steps, she stopped and moved aside. “I’m going to sit out here a while.”

  He thought of what she had told him that day they had hiked the trail. She loved thunder and lightning. He smiled. “I’ll join you.”

  He hung his Stetson from the railing and went with her to the wooden lawn chairs beside the house. He took the chair facing the back porch light fixture. The glow turned her hair to liquid silver and partly hid her face in shadow. Lightning illuminated her fully from time to time, but not long enough for him to gauge her expression.

  He sat with his fingers clamped to his knees and his heart thudding like a pile driver. He didn’t know where to start or what to say. His hand itched to make a silvery slide down the length of her hair. Instead, he touched her shoulder. She turned his way.

  “I talked to Sam tonight,” he said. “He’s still bragging about his son.”

  “He hasn’t stopped since the baby arrived.”

  “Yeah. I told you Billy was my pride, too.” He sighed. “But, Lianne, when I talked about the accident, I never said anything about what came after. When I couldn’t get anyone to explain what happened.” She needed to read his lips. He couldn’t look away. But he couldn’t meet her eyes.

  He looked into the distance at the flashes of jagged light. “I wanted to find answers. A reason for the accident. And that need spread to everything I did.”

  He told her about those first weeks, when he had walked around trying to get his job done but feeling as if he moved through a fog. About the months after that, when his fuse got shorter and his temper got hotter. “But I still couldn’t get answers to my questions. That wasn’t something I could control. Instead, I started trying to control everything around me.”

  He told her about letting his frustration drive him, making him drive his wranglers, running them all into the ground so he wouldn’t have to face his empty house and the long hours of not knowing.

  Beyond her, lightning flashed. He waited for the rumble of thunder. Waited for the sound to die away.

  Then he told her the worst. That last week in Montana, when he’d sucker punched a drunken cowboy. When Caleb had given him the news about sending him to New Mexico.