by Connie Mann
She skidded to a halt by the sheds and ran into the one she’d gotten shovels from, but Duane wasn’t there. He wasn’t in any of the other two, either.
She hopped back on the ATV and drove all the way around the barn, then over past the berry fields. She stopped every so often and stood on the seat to get a better vantage point in case he’d fallen somewhere, but still nothing. Where could he have gone?
Could he have circled back to the house? She checked there next, grateful when she remembered the stove and saw someone had turned it off. Then she drove around the paddock and back to the barn from the opposite direction, calling Duane’s name as she went.
Sirens finally sounded in the distance, and Eve breathed a sigh of relief. But as she looked at the flames, she wondered if it was too little, too late, as Cole feared. There was so much blackened earth where the hay had been.
Eve saw the big pumper truck, followed by four pickups that must belong to the firefighters, make the turn onto the ranch. She took off around the paddock, figuring they could find their way easily enough. But she had to find Duane.
She raced back toward where the fire had started. Her heart clenched at all the blackened earth, but she couldn’t think about that or she’d cry. That would come later. She stood on the ATV again and scanned the field. “Duane! Where are you?”
Wait. Was that a groan? “Duane? Are you here?”
She waited. There it was again. She climbed back on the seat and slowly headed in the direction she thought the sound was coming from. “Duane? Let me know where you are.”
“Here.” The sound was so faint, she almost missed it.
Eve stopped the ATV and stood up on it again, scanning the area. There! She jumped off and almost stumbled in her haste. Just on the edge of the burned-out field, in a slight depression, lay Duane. Facedown.
Eve skidded to a stop and crouched down beside him. She bit back her horror at the burns on his back. Had he been completely caught in the fire? “Easy, Duane. I’m here. I’ll get help, OK? Don’t move.”
She reached for her cell phone, but couldn’t find it. It must have fallen out of her pocket at some point as she raced around. She turned back to Duane. “I’m going for help. I’ll be right back. Stay put. Please.”
He didn’t respond, and Eve’s panic climbed higher. She hopped back on the ATV and raced over to the fire truck, which was just getting to work. It seemed to take forever to get there. But as soon as she did, she ran to where Cole and the firefighters were working.
“I found Duane, but he’s badly burned.”
“Show me,” one of the firemen said, and she recognized Chad Everson, Nick’s friend and the high school football coach. “Let me grab my truck and some gear.”
Cole turned toward the trucks. “I’m coming with you.”
Chad grabbed his arm. “You’ll be more help here. We’ll take care of him.”
Cole looked torn, but then someone called his name to help. He closed his eyes and then mouthed “Thank you” in Eve’s direction before he ran over and grabbed hold of one of the fire hoses.
Chad ran back to the fire truck and pulled out a medical bag while one of the other firefighters put a backboard into the bed of a pickup truck and got behind the wheel.
“Lead the way,” Chad called as he hopped into the passenger seat of the pickup. Eve turned the ATV around and led them back the way she’d come.
For a volunteer fire department, their skill and competence impressed Eve. She crouched down beside Duane in case they needed help, but she couldn’t look at his burns for fear she’d start sobbing. She prayed silently and watched as they quickly checked his airway and gave him oxygen, then started IVs, urgently talking into their radios in codes and numbers she didn’t understand.
Chad glanced her way. “I called for a medevac to take him to the burn center in Gainesville. This is more than our little hospital can handle. He needs specialized care.”
Just then there were more sirens, and Eve turned to see Chief Monroe pulling up, followed by Nick in his official SUV.
Nick was the first to reach her. “Are you OK?”
She stood and walked a slight distance away. “I’m fine. But Duane . . . it’s bad.”
Nick glanced over. “What happened to him?”
“I found him facedown at the edge of the fire. His burns . . . they’re really bad.”
Nick scanned the area. “Do you know how the fire started?”
Eve stopped. Stared. In all the chaos and panic, she hadn’t given it a single thought, and she said so. “We were all focused on trying to put it out.”
“As you should have been.”
“We didn’t know where Duane was. His truck was here, but we couldn’t find him.”
Eve heard Duane moan and sent up another silent prayer. She couldn’t say she liked him much, but no one should have to suffer like this. The EMTs were working like crazy, but it was obvious that Duane’s injuries needed immediate care.
It seemed like hours before Eve heard the helicopter approaching. Alice came running over from the barn. She took one look at her brother and tried to reach for him. Eve grabbed her from behind and stopped her. “Easy, Alice. Let them do their thing.”
“Duane, oh, dear God, Duane. Oh, you poor, dear man. Oh, Jesus . . .” The words tumbled out amid a torrent of tears as she struggled to reach her brother. Eve didn’t know what to do, so she simply turned the other woman in her arms and held her while she sobbed.
The helicopter landed quite a ways away, so as not to make the fire worse. The second EMT turned to Eve. “We’re going to drive him to the chopper in my truck.”
“I’m going with you,” Alice cried.
The man’s eyes were kind, but his tone firm. “I’m sorry, ma’am, but there isn’t enough room in the chopper.”
Eve looked Alice directly in the eyes, tried to reach past her panic. “They’re taking him to Gainesville. I’ll drive you, OK?” When Alice nodded, Eve turned to the EMT. “We’ll meet you there.”
Eve turned Alice back toward the house and away from the sight of her brother’s burns. They hadn’t gone far when Buzz stalked up to them and cut off their progress.
“We’ll find who did this, Alice. Don’t you worry.”
Her smile didn’t reach her eyes, but she tried. “Thank you, Buzz. I appreciate all you’re doing. All you’ve done.”
He reached out as if to touch her, then drew his hands back and shoved them into his pockets. The two of them exchanged a long look Eve couldn’t decipher before he turned back. Alice looked over her shoulder and watched him go.
Eve helped Alice into the car, and they set off, Eve praying all the while. She might not care much for Duane but he was Alice’s brother, and from what she’d heard, a good man when he wasn’t drinking. She asked God to spare his life, but also to bring healing.
As she drove, Eve also thought about the field and wondered what Duane had been doing out there. Had he accidentally lit the fire?
Or worse, had he set it deliberately?
The thought sent goose bumps over her skin. It was no secret Duane wanted the ranch. Would he have done such a thing to try to get it? Eve wasn’t sure, hated to even think such a thing, but she knew if it had crossed her mind, it was on Cole’s and Nick’s and everyone else’s, too.
Where would it end?
Chapter 28
Cole watched as the medevac helicopter lifted off and Eve drove off with his mother. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d been this exhausted, but they weren’t done yet. He turned and headed back to the burned-out field with the fire chief, Chief Monroe, and Nick Stanton.
“No idea how the fire started, Cole?” Chief Monroe asked.
He shook his head. “Seems like it started in an instant and turned into an inferno in ten seconds flat.”
The fire chief suddenly quickened his pace, bent down, and picked something up. “I think we know what started it.”
Cole’s heart sank at the gas can th
e man held. They weren’t standing far from where they’d found Duane, and from the looks on everyone’s faces, they were all thinking the same thing. Would his uncle really have stooped that low to get the ranch?
“This doesn’t necessarily mean Duane started the fire,” Nick was quick to point out. “Duane might have seen someone else set the fire and have gone out to try to stop them or figure out what was going on.”
“We won’t know for sure until Duane can answer a few questions,” Chief Monroe added. The EMTs had said the hospital would put him into a drug-induced coma for a few days. Still, the fact that he had a bump on his head could indicate someone had knocked him out.
Three mornings later, Cole scrubbed a hand over his stubbled jaw and tried to clear his head as he walked down the hall in the ranch house. After a two-day vigil at the hospital, Cole had finally convinced his mother to come home last night to rest and get cleaned up. They all needed sleep in the worst way.
He walked into the kitchen to find Eve at the stove. He stepped over and put his arms around her from behind, needing nothing more in that moment than to absorb the feel of her in his arms. He breathed in the citrus-and-coconut scent that floated from her skin and hair, a stark contrast to the smoke that still seemed to ooze from his every pore. “That smells great. You smell great.”
She smiled at him over her shoulder, but her eyes were worried. “Did you get some sleep, finally?”
He leaned his head on her shoulder. “Some. You?”
“The same. Grab some coffee. I’ll have breakfast ready in a second.”
He didn’t move. It felt too good just to hold her like this, to see her in the ranch kitchen, cooking. Something inside him shifted, and he realized he wanted to do this every morning. Not that he expected her to cook breakfast every day, but he wanted Eve here, on the ranch, so he could hold her just like this every day. The thought had slipped through his mind before, but he’d shoved it away.
This time the thought took root, even though every instinct said to pull away. But he forced himself to stay where he was, to absorb this feeling, see how it fit.
Once he eased his mind past the panic, he found he liked it. He liked it a lot. Being with Eve felt like coming home. Her, the ranch, all rolled together in his mind, and he saw his future—their future—spread out before him. He pictured a few kids running around the yard, chasing another dog or two, and he and Eve sitting on the porch, watching them.
The vision was so clear, he started when she spoke.
“If you don’t let go, cowboy, the eggs will burn.” The tone was stern, but he heard the smile in it.
He placed a quick kiss on her neck and smiled as he poured coffee. “You didn’t have to cook, but man it smells good.”
“My pleasure,” she said as she slid the eggs onto a plate and added bacon and toast.
“Sit down and join me,” he said when she turned back to the sink to start washing up. “And I’ll do the dishes.”
Her eyebrows shot up. “You do dishes?”
“Smarty-pants. Yes, I do dishes. Whoever cooks shouldn’t have to clean up, as well.”
She grinned as she scooped eggs onto a plate, grabbed bacon and toast, and sat down across from him. “I like the way you think, cowboy.”
“I’m hoping that’s not the only thing you like about me, Evie the Crusader,” he quipped, then watched her eyes. They darted around the room, and he could sense the panic humming just beneath her skin. He reached across the table and took one of her hands in his, surprised to feel her trembling. He didn’t think Eve was afraid of anything. But from what he’d seen, feelings scared her.
Which he understood, because the feelings racing around inside him right now made him want to head for the hills, too, as it were. Instead, he took her other hand, as well, and held tight when she would have pulled away. Then he waited for her eyes to quit darting around the room and look at him.
“Look, Eve, I—”
His mother walked into the room, fully dressed for the day, looking like a woman on a mission. Which surprised him, since she’d been dead on her feet last night.
Eve tugged her hands away and studied her food, her obvious relief making him wonder what she’d been afraid he was going to say. Especially since he wasn’t entirely sure himself. But it had something to do with—
“I need to talk to you, Cole,” Alice said, tone brisk as she poured herself a cup of coffee.
Her tone put him on alert, but he kept his voice casual. “Sure. What’s up, Ma?”
“I’ve saved up a little money from my quilts, and I’m using it to put a down payment on a little cottage just off Main Street. I’ve also been hired to work at the new quilt-and-yarn shop Junie Ryder is opening in Safe Harbor.”
If his mother had said she were running for president of the United States, he would have been less surprised. He tried to process what he’d just heard, but came up blank. “You’re buying investment property?” It was the only thing that made sense, but given the ranch finances, actually, it didn’t.
“No, not as an investment. To live in.”
“But you live here. You’ve always lived here.” Cole knew he sounded like an idiot, but he couldn’t seem to stop. “I don’t understand.”
His mother slid into the chair beside him and took one of his hands, much like he’d taken Eve’s, only this time, he felt like he was five years old again, and the look in her eyes said he wasn’t going to like what he heard.
“I’ve been thinking, for a while, actually, that it’s time for me to make a change. I think I’d like to live in town.”
“But you’ve always lived on the ranch.”
She smiled. “I have, my whole life. So it’s time for a change, don’t you think?”
“What about the ranch?”
“I’m signing it over to you. I want you to have it. I’ve always wanted that. I think your father did, too.”
Cole snorted at that last bit. “What about Duane?”
“I love my brother, and honestly, coming so close to losing him reminded me how fragile and how short life can be. He can’t run this place, much as he says he wants to. I won’t sell it to him, in any case.” She paused, waited until he met her eyes. “This place was your father’s dream, not mine.”
When Cole started to protest, she held up a hand. “Let me finish. You are not your father. You are a different kind of man entirely, one who will love and care for this ranch and the animals and people who call it home. I think this place has always been your dream, too, whether you realized it or not. I’m signing it over to you.”
“I can protect you, if you stay.”
“Of course you can. It isn’t about protection. It’s about me moving on with my life. And you moving on with yours. You need to be the boss of Sutton Ranch, not my ranch manager. I’m giving it over to you, lock, stock, and barrel. It’s not worth much right now, especially with that loan, but if anyone can make this place profitable again, it’s you.”
Cole let the words roll around in his brain while he tried to process. “You don’t want the ranch.”
“It isn’t that I don’t want it so much as that I want you to have it. To make it your own, run it however you want, free from the past.”
“Why didn’t you ever say any of this?”
She shrugged, the shadows in her eyes telling him without words that it was because of his father, out of some misguided loyalty to him. “You never asked.”
He had no idea what to say. Until he screwed everything up when he was still in his teens, he’d been planning to take over the ranch one day. His father had said as much, over and over, and Cole had believed him. Until the day Hank kicked him out and told him to never come back. Which he hadn’t, until now.
She wanted him to have the ranch.
Cole stood, hugged his mother once, hard, and walked out of the kitchen, grabbing his Stetson from the peg by the back door on his way out. He had to think, to process, and he couldn’t do that with her watching him
, with Eve watching him.
Is this what he wanted? At eighteen, absolutely, it had been. Even after he left, the need to come home, to come back, had always been there, surprising him with its intensity at odd moments.
But now? Was that still what he wanted? He’d come back for Ma, to help her. And he’d been glad to do it, never mind the emotional quagmire that had been. The place wasn’t just a chunk of dirt, and she knew it, too. Sutton Ranch held memories that were as much a part of the place as the fence posts and outbuildings. Everywhere he turned were memories. Some good. Some not, but they were there.
Did he want to stay?
The question circled round and round as he went out to the barn, saddled Morgan, and headed out. The best way to clear his head was still a gallop on his favorite horse.
He hadn’t gotten past the paddock when he heard Eve call his name. He almost kept going, pretending he hadn’t heard her, but he wasn’t that big a coward. He slowed, turned, and dismounted when she came running up to him.
She stopped safely out of Morgan’s reach. “Are you OK?”
He nodded. “I just need some time to think.”
“Want some company?”
“Are you offering to come riding with me?”
She paled. “Um, no, not really.”
“Then I guess I’ll see you later.”
He tried to ignore the hurt in her eyes as he swung up into the saddle and turned the horse away from the ranch. The fact that she so obviously didn’t belong in his world struck him like a blow. She might be wearing cowboy boots, jeans, and T-shirts these days, but Eve wasn’t a ranch girl. She was a city girl, and he couldn’t think with her around. He’d have to apologize later for being a jerk. Right now he needed a quick gallop to clear the cobwebs and help him turn his world back right side up, after his mother had spun everything out of control.
