by Andre, Bella
"We'll be fine."
The cottage seemed smaller somehow with him there, Andie thought, as if the walls had shrunk around him. It even smelled differently than it had when she'd been there that morning. Of cedar and pine. Rugged and rough.
What had she gotten herself into?
She took another steadying breath and glanced at Will, who leaned back against the kitchen counter, his arms folded.
"Where's Emily? I'm eager to meet her."
"Beth's. She said something about some show she wanted to see tonight. Since we don't have a television out here yet, she decided to stay there one more night."
A civil sentence out of the man, Andie thought, suppressing a grin. What was the world coming to? "You know," she said, "I've got two over at the house and I rarely watch either one of them. You're welcome to use one, if you'd like."
"Thanks." His jaw worked, as if it hurt him to say the word.
"It will just take me a minute to dig it out."
Coward, she called herself as she walked across the driveway to her own back door. She hadn't even been near Will Tanner for two minutes and here she was seizing on the most pitiful excuse she could find to escape.
She found the television set, still in its box, in her spare room. She hefted it into her arms and after sidestepping the eager animals who'd suddenly realized she was home, she made it to his back door.
"Sheriff?" she called through the screen.
He opened the door and she carried the box to the kitchen table.
"I can't promise the reception will be wonderful out here in the boondocks, but somebody who lived here before me rigged up an antennae on top of the barn. We usually get three or four channels, unless it's raining."
"That should be fine," he said gruffly.
"Where would you like it? The living room?" She grabbed the box from the table at the same moment he reached for it from the other side. Their hands touched, and just for an instant, electricity arced between them. The jolt shook her clear to her toes, and Andie could swear the air crackled and sparked between them.
Their gazes met, and she saw burgeoning awareness in his gray eyes before he turned abruptly, jerking the box out of her hands.
"I can take it. Thanks for bringing it over."
It was a clear dismissal, Andie thought, still shaken from the brief, sizzling contact. If she had a lick of sense, she would just head back over to the safety of her side of the driveway. As the full weight of the box fell into his arms, though, she saw pain flit across his features before he headed into the other room.
What was it about men? Was there some sort of stubbornness gene imprinted on the Y chromosome, some hidden marker that dictated they must, at all costs, pretend they were welded out of tough, unbreakable iron?
Andie shook her head and headed to the Jeep. She would just carry in a few of the bigger boxes, she told herself. It was the neighborly thing to do, after all. She might not have learned much about handling confrontations since coming to Whiskey Creek, but she had learned the value of being a good neighbor.
She was on her second load when he rolled back into the kitchen. He stopped abruptly and glowered at her from the doorway. "What the hell do you think you're doing?"
"Tap dancing. What does it look like?" She laughed at his frown. "I'll carry the rest of the boxes in and you can put things away. It should only take us a few minutes if we work together."
"I didn't ask for your help, lady, and I damn well don't need it."
"You didn't ask. I'm offering."
"I don't need a nursemaid." He snatched the box from her and hauled it through the doorway to the living room.
"Good grief," Andie exclaimed, trailing after him. "I'm just trying to help you bring in a few boxes, to save a little wear and tear on your shoulder. I'm not offering to give you a sponge bath, for heaven's sake."
"Get this through your head. You're my landlady; I'm your tenant. That's it. We're not friends, and you're sure as hell not my mother. I'll pay my rent on time and you just stay out of my way and we should get along fine."
Andie studied him for a moment, noting the tight lines of pain around his mouth and the stiff set of his shoulder.
Good grief. Still, she'd made the effort. It was nothing to her if the man worked himself back into the hospital, was it?
"Fine." She shrugged, heading toward the door. "Knock yourself out."
She scrupulously avoided looking out her windows at her new neighbor as she changed into gardening clothes and made a sandwich and salad for dinner. It wasn't until she was filling the dogs' dishes by the kitchen door that she caught a glimpse of Will walking out for what appeared to be the last load from the Jeep.
He hefted a big box, and even from thirty feet away she could see him wince.
Good grief.
In a few minutes, despite the strident arguments of all her better instincts, she was knocking on his door again. Will opened it, a scowl creasing his forehead.
"What now?"
She held out a jar of ointment. "Rub this on your shoulder if the pain starts getting to you."
He studied the jar suspiciously but unscrewed the lid and took a whiff. "What is it?"
"A little of this, a little of that. Mostly mountain laurel—nothing that should kill you. It's an old family recipe."
She hopped down the steps and was halfway across the driveway when he called after her. She pivoted back "Yes?"
Studiously avoiding her gaze, he fingered the door knob. "Thanks. And, uh, sorry for snapping at you back there."
Her smile was genuine. "You're welcome."
Andie tried to avoid thinking about Will while she spent the rest of the evening digging in her garden. It wasn't an easy task. She'd become accustomed to being alone, to walking around in her bare feet, to singing off-key at the top of her lungs if she felt like it. Even though she didn't see him again, she couldn't shake the feeling of invasion just knowing he was over in the foreman's cottage.
Later—after she'd soaked in the tub and climbed into bed—she gave up the struggle and let her mind wander over all the bits and pieces she knew about him. Really, thanks to Beth those bits and pieces added up to quite a clear picture of Will Tanner. Her friend had never been hesitant to talk about him, and Andie, oddly enough, had been intrigued about the man long before she met him, before she discovered he had a warrior's build and a devil's face, all hard planes and angles.
She knew his wife had been killed a few years earlier. Beth had taken several weeks off work to fly to Phoenix and help Will with his daughter, and she'd come back withdrawn and devastated by her brother's grief.
Andie knew he'd immersed himself in his work since then.
And she knew every grisly detail about the gun battle that had wounded him three months earlier and resulted in the death of one of the men involved in his wife's murder. And that the man who had masterminded the whole thing—the one who had shot both his wife and, later, Will—had escaped once again.
What she didn't understand was why he fascinated her so much. Why the few times she'd seen him, her pulse seemed to accelerate like she was hiking up the face of Lone Eagle Peak. Why she had a terrible fear he was going to completely jumble up the careful order she'd created of her life.
She fell asleep still wondering.
The phone's insistent ring woke her, and dragged her out of an unsettling dream about shootouts and wounded sheriffs, Andie glanced at the clock to find it was a few minutes past midnight.
"Hello?" She cleared the sleep from her voice.
Nobody answered. Her tormenting caller, she realized. He'd been calling every few weeks all summer long, sometimes in the middle of the night, sometimes early in the morning. One unnerving time at the school. Always when her guard was down.
She could hear him there now, taunting her with his silence, and she was just about to slam the receiver down when that voice—that oddly garbled, eerie mockery of a voice—whispered to her.
"Mind your own bu
siness, little schoolteacher."
The message was almost always the same. And so was her response. It had become sort of a sick game between them.
"No," she said as calmly as she could, and very gently replaced the phone in its cradle.
For a long time she sat there in bed, holding the pillow tight against her chest. She wasn't exactly scared, she told herself, just unnerved a bit. Still, she couldn't help creeping to the window and taking a careful look around her property.
All seemed in order. The dogs were quiet. In fact, the only noise was the barn owl calling to its mate and a loose section of metal roof on the drying shed pinging in the breeze.
Scaredy cat, she chided herself, and was ready to climb back into bed when a dark shadow disengaged itself from the trunk of the huge old limber pine that gave the ranch its name.
Andie's heart skipped a few beats, and she stepped back out of view until she realized the dogs would have raised one heck of a ruckus if a stranger were near. As the figure moved into the pale moonlight, she gave a shaky sigh of relief when she recognized Will Tanner.
For a long time, she watched, puzzled, while he walked the whole length of the ranch, turning his head back and forth, as if looking for something. It wasn't until he was out of sight on the other side of the house and she had climbed back into bed that the explanation for his odd behavior struck her.
Just like that wounded soldier she'd imagined him to be, he was checking out the perimeters of his new territory, examining every inch of the ranch, checking to make sure all was in order before he settled in for the night.
Despite her lingering unease from the phone call, Andie lay in her bed for a long time twisting her fingers into the scalloped edge of her old wedding ring quilt and smiling into the dark.
Chapter 3
This was all she needed, Andie thought, carefully cutting a sprig of lemon thyme to add to the others in her basket.
Other women might long for money or high-powered jobs or successful husbands. Her dreams, however, were right here: the gentle balm of the early morning sun, the cool dirt between her fingers, the smell of lavender and sage thick in the air.
To her, it was paradise, more precious still because of the battles—both emotional and physical—she'd fought to claim it.
She sat back on her heels and gazed around her little corner of the world. The barn and drying shed gleamed white in the morning sun. Hummingbirds and bees and kaleidoscopic butterflies flitted among the brilliant flowers. The water in the irrigation ditch that separated the garden from the house bubbled and gurgled in a familiar, comfortable song.
It was homey and welcoming. And it was hers.
When she stumbled on the ranch five years earlier, it had been barely livable, the garden fallow, the buildings literally toppling down. From the very beginning, though, the place had called to her.
In an odd sort of way, the ranch was her. Its rebirth had been her rebirth. Its healing, her healing.
She'd needed to work, then. Hard work. Strenuous, cleansing labor. She'd poured every ounce of her strength into the place, and later into the preschool.
As a result, Limber Pine Ranch sparkled and gleamed, its orchard ripe with fruit, its gardens productive once more. And the school had proved a success beyond her wildest dreams, drawing children from low-income families all across the county.
It was enough, she told herself. If sometimes she still lay in her bed at night and felt she would disappear under the weight of her loneliness, well, it was nothing she couldn't handle.
Andie stood and, hands in the small of her back arched and stretched stiff muscles. Judging by the sun, she had only a few more minutes if she wanted to hang the herbs in the drying shed before she would have to dress for work.
A mountain bluebird's warbling call glided across the cool air, and Andie spied it among the branches of her massive Scotch pine. Heralds of the rising sun, the Navajo called the little bird. She lifted her face to the sky, content to let the music wash through her.
A string of curses, ripe and inventive, ripped apart the quiet. The bluebird paused for only a moment, then in a flutter of azure wings it soared away.
Well, her tenant was awake, Andie thought, chuckling. And back to his normal irascible self. She gathered her basket and clippers and headed toward the commotion.
Rounding the corner of the barn, she swallowed a laugh at the sight that greeted her. Will was being held hostage by her goat. In full uniform, the lawman glowered at Mr. Whiskers from the cottage steps, watching the goat happily try to munch the driver's door handle on his Jeep. Every time Will attempted to move close enough to climb inside, the animal either kicked out with his hind legs or butted Will with his horns.
She compressed her lips tightly together to contain her mirth, but it bubbled out anyway.
Her tenant turned the full wattage of his glare in her direction. "Call off this damn mangy goat."
"Watch it. You'll hurt his feelings. He can be very sensitive." She grinned.
Will stared at her. "He's a goat."
"But he's very in tune with his inner child. Or kid, I guess you'd say."
"I'm about ready to kick his inner kid from here to Cheyenne if he doesn't quit eating my Jeep."
Andie laughed and held out her free hand. Mr. Whiskers docily ambled over for her affectionate pat. He lipped the hem of her T-shirt. "Sorry he bothered you. It's just his way of letting you know who's boss." She burrowed her hands in the goat's short, coarse hide. "I usually keep him staked out wherever the grass needs clipping, but lately he's discovered the fun of eating through his leash. Sometimes a goat just needs to run free, I guess."
Will growled deep in his throat, and she couldn't help laughing again. He was surly and humorless, and somehow the combination just made him seem more attractive.
"How's the shoulder?"
"Fine," he said abruptly. He paused and moderated his tone. "Better. The gunk you gave me seemed to help. Thanks."
"You're welcome. When you run out, let me know and I can whip up some more."
"I saw the gardens last night. Did you grow all the things you put in that stuff?"
The reminder of his trip around her property the night before had an unsettling effect on her. She'd always thought of herself as independent and self-sufficient. It was an odd and not completely comfortable revelation for a thirty-two-year-old woman who'd been on her own for years to discover she rather liked the idea of somebody watching out for her.
"Most of it," she answered. "My mom sent me some things I can't cultivate in our short growing season here."
Beyond Will's shoulder Lone Eagle Peak jutted into the sky, harsh and unforgiving and beautiful, its glacial face gleaming in the sun, a harbinger of snows to come. "It's hard to remember, with this heat wave we're having," she added, "but the first hard freeze is just around the corner."
The sheriff followed her gaze to the peak part of the vast Wind River range. "Quite a place you've got here. One hell of a view."
"I like it." She smiled up at him, wondering what it would take to bring an answering smile to those masculine features, as rough-hewn and frozen as the mountain. "I doubt you'll find anywhere on earth more peaceful."
His jaw worked. "Yeah, well, I'm not looking for peace." He slid into the Jeep.
Unable to help herself, Andie walked over to the vehicle. "What are you looking for, Sheriff?"
Will looked away, then back at her, his gray eyes haunted. The grief in them slammed into her stomach like a fist.
"Atonement," he said quietly.
Without another word, he started the Jeep and pulled out of her driveway in a crunch of gravel, leaving her to stare after him, her throat tight and her heart aching.
You don't need this, Andie reminded herself. You can't be the man's salvation any more than you can jump off the top of Lone Eagle Peak and fly back home.
Still, she stood watching the empty road for a long time, wondering.
***
"Bet
h, sit down before I tie you to the damn chair."
Will's sister pushed a wilted red curl of hair behind her ear and reached into the cupboard over the stove.
"This is my kitchen, William Charles Tanner," she said, her voice hollow from inside the cupboard, "and I'm not going to let you boss me around in it."
"And I'm not about to let you wait on me. As soon as Emily and Jace come back from moving the irrigation pipe, she and I will be leaving for our own place. You don't need to fix us dinner, so just take yourself back into that living room and put your feet up. If you had the sense God gave a goose, you'd know that's exactly where you should be."
"Honk honk." She pouted at him but eased herself into one of the chairs around the kitchen table, giving a little sigh of relief even as she grabbed a bowl of string beans, fresh from the garden.
"So how do you like your new landlady?" she asked, her fingers swiftly snapping away.
Will thought of sun-warmed skin and that throaty laugh and long, tanned legs that made him imagine naked heat and sultry nights. His little sister probably didn't want to know he'd barely slept the night before. Every time he'd closed his eyes, Andie McPhee had been there, poking at him, sneaking into his mind with that low laugh and that hidden dimple and those sparkling eyes the color of rain-soaked quaking aspen leaves.
"Fine," he grunted, then reached to help her snap the beans.
"She's turned the Limber Pine into a beautiful little place, hasn't she?" Beth didn't wait for an answer. "You should have seen it when she moved here. The place should have been condemned. No one had lived in it for years, and all the land had been sold off, but she just dug in and poured all she had into fixing it up, then later, opening the preschool."
Beth paused. "She's not had an easy time of it, you know."
Somehow he had known. He couldn't explain it rationally. Hell, he didn't even want to try. But something in the way she looked at him whispered of loss and old wounds and shattered dreams.
"No?" he asked his sister, then mentally groaned.
None of your business, Tanner, he reminded himself. You don't want to know.
