“What’s wrong?”
“There’s something on the ground in front of the garage,” I said. “I can’t tell what it is, but I think it’s an animal of some kind.”
He leaned over and looked at the mound on the ground, leaning back in his chair. I turned and looked at him, a frown covering my face. Not again. This couldn’t be happening again.
“You stay here,” he said. “I’m going to go check it out.”
He got out and ran toward the house, stopping a few feet from the animal. I slowly got out of the car and walked up behind him, seeing a fawn lying in the driveway, its throat cut, blood trickling down the driveway. I put my hands over my mouth and gasped. Ryan turned around and stood in front of me, staring into my tear-filled eyes. He forced me to look at him, grabbing me by the shoulders and bending his head down to my level.
“I want you to go inside and lock the door,” he said. “I’m going to take care of this, okay? When I’m done, I’ll walk around back to make sure I don’t see anything unusual, and then, I’ll knock on the back door. I want you to go inside, though. You don’t need to be out here for this.”
I shook my head, tears beginning to stream down my face. I didn’t understand what was happening or why anyone would do something like this. It was a baby and obviously had not died from an accident or from natural causes. Someone had killed that poor baby and dumped it in front of my garage, right where the cat had been. I looked up at Ryan and opened my mouth to protest, but he shook his head.
“I’m serious,” he said in a low, calm voice. “I want you to go inside and let me take care of this, okay?”
I nodded and walked to the front door. I searched through my purse, finding my keys and pulling them out. I grabbed them with both hands, trying to steady them from shaking. I got the key inside, opened the door, and quickly shut it behind me. I locked both locks and leaned my back against it, sobbing into my hands. Who could have done something so terrible like that? I took in a deep breath and leaned my head back, wiping the tears from my face. I needed to get myself under control. I couldn’t lose it just because there was a man there to protect me.
I walked down the hall, turning on all the lights in the house and grabbing the teapot. I filled it with water, watching my hands still shaking, and put it on the stove. I needed some nice, warm tea, something that would help calm my nerves and help me get my emotions under control. As the water heated, I pulled down two mugs and the teabags, deciding on English Breakfast. I prepared the cups with sugar and the bags and waited for the water to boil. I looked toward the back door, wondering what could be taking Ryan so long. He’d told me to stay in the house, and that was what I was going to do until something forced me otherwise. As the teapot began to scream, I picked it up and poured the hot water into the mugs, setting it back down on a cool burner.
I turned to grab a spoon from the center island and screamed, grabbing my chest. Ryan was standing at the back door looking in, and I must not have heard him knock with the teapot going off. I walked over and unlocked the door, letting him inside and locking it behind him. This night was going to get the best of me yet.
Chapter 9
Ryan
I took some trash bags from Sara’s garage and wrapped the fawn up tightly before putting it in the back of the SUV. I walked around the front yard looking for any kind of clue as to why someone would have done this. I had never seen a dead deer in person before, and it made me sad to have to wrap it up. There were a bunch of local guys working on the ranch now, and I knew one of them would be able to tell me how to dispose of it. I hoped one of them would take it and maybe even give me some idea why someone had killed it. It was just a baby, and this couldn’t possibly be legal when it came to hunting, not that I knew that much about the sport. Either way, I had to get rid of the thing for Sara. There was no way that she needed to deal with something like this.
I walked around to the backyard and poked my head in the small shed, just making sure there was no one around hiding. When I felt comfortable enough, I turned, walking back toward the house. I didn’t want to be gone too long. I knew that Sara didn’t need to be alone. I wanted to focus on her, help her through this. She was incredibly upset, and I didn’t blame her one bit. Anyone would have been upset by it, and there was no way that fawn wandered into her yard and was injured like that by accident. Sara had spent her entire life learning about animals, taking care of them, nursing them back to health and everything in between. She loved animals more than she loved people. I could tell by the way she talked about her job. Seeing a dead one, one that was so young and obviously killed on purpose had to be no fun for her, and I couldn’t imagine how she might be feeling.
I stepped up to the door and knocked, hearing the sound of a teapot and seeing her standing with her back to me. I waited, finding it pointless to keep banging when she couldn’t hear me. As she turned around, though, she jumped straight into the air, grabbing her chest. I smiled and waved at her, making sure she knew it was me. She shook her head and walked over, opening the door and letting me in. I walked into her kitchen and watched as she closed and locked the door.
“Are you okay?” I asked.
“No,” she said. “But I will survive it. That poor baby deer. I just don’t understand.”
“Me either,” I said.
“Would you like some tea?”
“I’d love some,” I replied.
She grabbed the mugs off the counter, walked over to the kitchen table, and sat down. I sat next to her, turning my chair toward her to talk. I needed to know what was going on, what she thought might be the motive for someone dropping off a dead animal in her driveway. She took a sip of her tea and put the mug down, looking over at me. I took her hands in mine and smiled at her sweetly.
“Do you have any idea what might have happened?” I asked. “How that animal might have ended up in your driveway?”
“I don’t know.” She sighed. “This morning, when I got up to go to work, there was a dead cat in the driveway. It spooked me at first, but when I took a closer look, it seemed as if it had maybe been hit by a car or fallen and broken its neck. It certainly didn’t look like that deer, which was obviously killed by someone and brutally.”
“What did you do with the cat?”
“I took it to the mortuary and had it disposed of,” she said.
“Do you know why someone would leave the cat there?”
“I don’t know,” she said. “I figured maybe someone from the community, someone who knew I was the only vet in town, put it there. Maybe they thought they were somehow helping by bringing the dead animal to my home so they wouldn’t just rot in the street or something. I thought it could have been someone’s pet, or someone hit the cat and didn’t know what to do so they brought it to my house. People here in this town try to do the right thing, even though sometimes they’re misguided in their attempts.”
“Right,” I said, leaning back in my chair. “I can see how you would think that with the cat.”
“The deer is strange, I know,” she said, shaking her head. “It doesn’t look like it was accidentally killed, but you never know what happened.”
“True,” I said, shaking my head.
I wanted to believe Sara’s theory was the truth. It would be simple, non-threatening, and could be handled with a call to the mayor or to the paper to let people know how to properly dispose of animals. It was also a little far-fetched, and I found it hard to believe that was what was going on. Truth be told, my gut was telling me something else might be at play, something that had more to do with the message behind the dead animals than someone trying to help out. My mind immediately went to the other night when I’d first met Sara and to the confrontation she’d had with the sheriff. I had to wonder if he had something to do with what was going on. My first impression of the man made me think there was a very real possibility he’d had something to do with it, but I couldn’t know for sure without knowing more about his relationship with Sa
ra, something I wasn’t sure she wanted to talk to me about.
We sat for several moments in the quiet, and I watched her stare blankly out the back door window as she sipped her tea. I still felt like I needed to protect her, and I couldn’t let some simple questions get in the way of that. I needed to ask her about the sheriff.
“Sara, I think you know I could tell there was more to the incident with the sheriff in the parking lot than him losing a bid,” I said carefully. “I’d really like to know what kind of relationship the two of you had.”
“No,” she said, shaking her head. “The past needs to stay in the past. Digging that kind of stuff up can only lead to bad things, and I’m one person who thinks looking to the past can only be harmful to the future. I just want my past to stay dead and buried, Ryan. I don’t want to think about it anymore.”
“I understand,” he said. “I have things like that in my past. And I agree it’s usually best to leave the past right there and move forward. However, after seeing how the sheriff reacted to you and me in the parking lot the other night, I can’t help but think …”
“What?” she said, looking at me. “You can’t help but think what?”
“That maybe he doesn’t see you as part of his past,” I said. “Maybe he still sees you as part of his present and part of his future. This is a small town, and there’s no way he didn’t know about our date tonight.”
“Dammit.” She frowned and rubbed her face. “I don’t want anything to do with that man. He’s really not a good person. That night in the parking lot was a fluke. I’ve stayed away from him for a very long time.”
“Why?” I said. “You can trust me. I’m just trying to help.”
“Fine,” she said after a few moments. “I’ll tell you about the sheriff and me, but first you have to tell me about your exes or at least the last one you had.”
As soon as she said that, a wave of anxiety ran through my chest. I’d been trying to keep things about myself on a positive note all night long, but as with most exes, there was never a good story behind it. I wanted to let her in, I really did, but at the same time, I still wanted her to see me in a positive light. There were things from my past, things about me, that I wanted to keep hidden, and it wasn’t for any other reason than that I wasn’t the same man I used to be. My last relationship hadn’t ended well at all, not even in the least. It was a complicated story with twists and turns, and in the end, I would come out looking like the worst out of the two of us. I really didn’t want to tell Sara about it, not yet at least. I wanted her to continue to see the man I was, not the man I used to be, but if I told her everything, she wouldn’t be able to stop herself from seeing that man. I twisted my hands together and looked down at the floor, trying to decide what to say next.
I might not want to reveal my past but neither did she. I needed to know what had happened between the sheriff and Sara. It was a burning need in my gut. It mostly had to do with my suspicion that he was somehow involved in the animals being left in the driveway, but it also had to do with my protective urges toward Sara. I couldn’t explain why, but I no longer just wanted to keep her safe. I felt like I had to keep her safe from the sheriff and everyone else. The only way to get her to open up was by telling her about my ex or at least most of it.
“All right,” I said, sitting up. “My last relationship didn’t end long ago. I was dating a girl named Mia, who I had met at one of my technology convention dinners. She was the daughter of a very wealthy and very powerful man who did business with my company and many others throughout the world. She was used to a life of luxury and privilege. It was just how she was raised, and it was the only way she ever knew. Her father was extremely controlling over her, watching her every move, scrutinizing every man she ever dated, and basically pulling the purse strings, which, in her life, controlled everything else. This upset her. She wanted freedom from that but didn’t want to give up the life she was accustomed to. So, she started dating me to piss off her father. He didn’t like my past.”
“Your past?” Sara asked.
“I grew up poor, with very little, and had to work for everything I had from the time I was a kid,” I said. “I didn’t come from any sort of money at all. Her father didn’t care what kind of money I had now. He wanted Mia to marry into a rich family dynasty. He wanted her to be part of a family with old money like his family was. The last thing he wanted was a guy who had built himself up from the bottom and still thought like a poor guy. Don’t get me wrong. I have really nice things, but I don’t think like the rich people do. I don’t have an air to me, and I don’t look down on others because they aren’t rich.”
“I can see that,” she said, listening to my story. “You’ve come off as very down-to-earth since I met you.”
“I am down-to-earth.” I smiled. “I don’t want to be the guy who raises a family with a silver spoon in their mouths. I came from nothing, and I’ve seen how quickly you can go back to that. I will never take that for granted. Anyway, she got tired of the game, and after quite a while, she dumped me.”
For a moment, I felt guilty about only having told her a slice of the real story. The look on her face was of sincere sympathy, and that was what triggered the guilt. In reality, the story had so many more pieces, but I wasn’t ready to let her know about the man I used to be.
Chapter 10
Sara
He looked up at me and nodded, having told me his story. I realized then that it was my turn to talk, and I really didn’t want to, but he had held up his end of the bargain, so it was only right. I cleared my throat and leaned back in the chair, looking out the window.
“Janson and I had been dating for about three years,” I said, starting the story. “There was even a period of time when his house was under renovation that he’d moved in here with me. It was a very short time since we both found that living together wasn’t quite the easiest thing to do. I’d always had this suspicion that he was cheating on me and even had several people in town come and tell me, but it took quite a while before I had hard evidence to really show him. One day when I was at the station visiting him for lunch, I saw some texts come in on his phone from a waitress at the saloon downtown. She was talking about the night before and all kinds of personal things, things only someone who had slept with him would know. I left the station and went home and thought about it until he came over that evening. I confronted him, and when he admitted to it, I broke it off with him. It’s been a while but really not that long if I think about it. About six months maybe.”
“And how did he take it?” Ryan asked.
“Not very good.” I smiled. “Let’s just say he was not happy about it, and he let me know that very sternly. I stayed away from him after that, until the other night in the parking lot.”
I turned back in my chair and drank the last of my tea, not wanting to look him in the eyes. I had left out the worst part of the abuse. I didn’t want Ryan to feel sorry for me. It drove me nuts when anyone felt sorry for me, much less the guy I was really starting to like. It wasn’t something I had told anyone but Alison, and it needed to stay that way. It wasn’t like I could go to the police. He was the sheriff.
I looked over at Ryan as he sat thinking about what I said. I realized in that moment that me not telling him about the abuse was more than just me not wanting him to feel sorry for me. I wanted him to respect me, not pity me, not want to feel bad for me. I wanted him to think of me as a strong person.
I shook my head and pushed my chair back, taking the cups over to the sink to rinse them off. I was tired of living in this fear of Janson, this creepy shadow who seemed to follow me everywhere. It wasn’t that I was stuck in the past. It was that the past was always right there in front of me, chasing me around every corner. I couldn’t get away from him unless I moved, and Bonanza was my home. I still had the hope that he would one day move past it all and leave me alone. I knew it was a long shot, but I had to hope for something more than the life I was living.
“I want to ask you something,” he said.
“All right,” I said, nodding my head. “I’ll answer the best I can.”
“Does Janson still want you?” he asked. “I mean is he still in love with you like he was six months ago?”
I stared at him for a minute before dropping my eyes to the floor, nodding my head up and down. I didn’t want to say the words out loud because I hated the thought of Janson. I hated the thought of him even thinking about me, much less still being in love with me. The man had hurt me in ways I didn’t know would ever heal. I turned my head and looked off into the distance. My thoughts whirled around in my head, knowing exactly where Ryan was going with all of this. He thought Janson might have something to do with the animals out front, and sadly, I couldn’t deny it was a possibility. He had never done something like this before, but that didn’t mean he wasn’t capable.
Ryan reached over and put his finger under my chin, guiding my gaze back to his. I could tell by the look in his eyes that he wanted to know more, that he needed to know more, but I didn’t want to tell him. He could sense I was holding back, and he had seen the way Janson had treated me that day. There was no way I could deny that he had done that before and more than once. So, to head off any more questions, I took in a deep breath and lunged forward, pressing my lips against his. He stumbled backward, catching himself on the island counter. I had caught him off guard, but he had done the same to me when I felt just how soft his lips really were. In fact, he had caught me off guard from the first moment I met him.
I stepped forward, following him backward, unable to pull my lips from his. He tasted like honey and tea, and the scent of his cologne wafted strongly into my brain. When he had gotten his footing, he immediately responded, wrapping his arms around my body and pulling me close to him. I wound my arms up around his neck as he deepened the kiss, moving his tongue over my lips and pushing them apart. It had been a long time since a man had kissed me like that, and I found a small whimper escaping my throat. The intensity between us took my breath away, and I could feel myself getting weak in the knees. The lust and desire between us were as thick as fog, and finding a way out of that embrace was nowhere even close to my thoughts. I didn’t know if it was the moment or if it was the attraction, but the man had completely swept me off my feet.
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