“Bobby,” she breathed, moving to the bed and kneeling in front of it, Sammy standing next to her. The little girl leaned down and placed a soft kiss on her father’s cheek.
“Are you all right, Papa?” Sammy asked. “You look like you hurt.”
Bobby nodded, grimacing when he did it and grunting softly. “I am hurting, honey, but I’ll be all right. It’s not bleeding.”
“Do you want some more whiskey?”
Bobby’s eyes flicked up to Sarah and the two of them grinned at each other. He shook his head, chuckling a little. “No, dear. I don’t want to be drunk all day long. I can take a little pain. Here…” He grunted, holding out one hand to her. “Help me up.”
“Should you be moving?” Sarah asked, worried.
He looked at her. “Sarah, I have to get up. We have to check the land.” He swept his eyes through the room. “I see Steven has left. The fact that he didn’t come back must mean the way is passable out there. I know he wanted to go be with his family.”
Sarah nodded. “It was good of him to stay here. Good of him to help you when his family was out there, in danger.”
Bobby pushed himself to his feet, pain obvious on his face. Sarah stood next to him, putting one hand on his chest. He bent slightly and gave her a soft kiss on the forehead. She closed her eyes, enjoying the feel of his lips against her skin. It sent tingles down her thighs when he showed her affection.
Sarah tried not to feel wrong for wanting affection from him. He was her husband, after all. She turned her face up, lifted to her tiptoes, and pressed her lips against his.
“I’m so glad you’re all right,” she whispered, close enough so their lips brushed against each other when she spoke. She heard him draw a sharp breath.
“I’m so much better now that my women are with me,” he said quietly, putting one arm around her and taking Sammy’s hand with the other.
“Should we wake them, Papa?” Sammy asked, looking up at her father and then turning her eyes to the still sleeping ranch hands. “I think they must have been up very late. They look so tired.”
“They’ll be fine,” Bobby said, glancing around the room. “Looks like Steven must have let Scout and Brute out, too.”
His eyes dropped to where Sandy was sitting calmly next to Sammy. “But this one wasn’t gonna leave his girl, was he?” He bent over to pet the animal. Sarah heard him grunt in pain. Her heart squeezed for him. He didn’t pet the dog for long before standing up straight.
“Why did you say you don’t love him, Papa?” Sammy asked, her voice soft and emotional.
Bobby looked at his daughter like she’d lost his mind and then remembered what he’d said earlier. He smiled, shaking his head. “No, I didn’t mean that I don’t love Sandy,” he explained. “I meant that I just don’t love him, I don’t think, as much as you do. You are his best friend and he is yours.”
Sammy dropped her eyes to the ground, a pretty smile on her small lips. “Oh, I see. But I think you do love him just as much. I know you love me just as much as I love you.”
Sarah watched the two banter back and forth, their love for each other obvious to anyone with eyes. Bobby rubbed his daughter’s head with one hand. “Let’s go see what the damage is,” he said.
Sarah’s heart thumped hard in her chest. She was afraid to go outside and see what had happened. What if the house wasn’t above them anymore? What if everything Bobby owned was gone? Destroyed? Tossed a thousand miles away by the fast, harsh winds of the tornado?
She tried to stay calm, taking a lesson from Bobby. He was in pain, but he didn’t look afraid or worried. She didn’t know how he could remain so calm when faced with the prospect of complete devastation above ground.
The three of them went toward the door that would lead outside.
“Let’s go outside first,” Bobby suggested, going up the stairs and lifting the locking bar from its place. He tossed it behind him. Sarah got the impression it was a little heavier than he’d expected and since his strength was compromised somewhat, he’d simply let it fall. “We can see the house from out there so if there are walls missing, we’ll know. I want to see how many buildings have to be rebuilt.”
He pushed the doors and lifted up so he could see around the land. He dropped back down and looked at his two women at the bottom of the stairs. Sarah knew she looked worried. Sammy was simply curious, her blue eyes sparkling with intensity.
Bobby’s face was serious. He still looked calm but now he looked a little more worried than he had before.
“How does it look, Bobby?” she asked, quietly.
“Come on up and look for yourself,” he said, his voice equally low. He held out one hand to Sammy. She broke away from Sandy and Sarah and dashed up the steps to take it. Sarah followed behind the girl, lifting her dusty skirt up so she didn’t trip.
The sun was just above the mountains. If she had to guess, Sarah would have said it was probably about eight in the morning. The air was still crisp with the early morning dew on the ground shining like tiny pebbles.
Sarah’s heart dipped into her stomach when she came up and darted her eyes from side to side.
“Oh, Papa,” Sammy said, her eyes wide with shock, her small hands in front of her open mouth. “What will we do?”
Bobby squeezed her hand, lifting it up and kissing the child’s fingers. “Don’t you worry, Sammy. We can rebuild. It will take a little while, maybe six months to a year or so. But we can rebuild.”
Sarah was glad he sounded so confident. He looked determined.
She swept her eyes across the land, spinning around to look at the house. The side facing her looked like it had been through nothing more than a hard rain. There was one window broken on the second floor. Otherwise, it looked like the tornado had left the house alone. She couldn’t see the other side of the house as it stretched out over the land. She could only hope the rest was as untouched as this side appeared to be.
Her relief that the house was still standing was short-lived as she turned to look at front of the house. Trees had been ripped from the ground, bushes blown so hard they were in pieces all along the courtyard. Half of the barn was gone, leaving the other half standing. The bunkhouse was leveled, the debris from the building and its contents scattered all around them. She figured a lot of it was blown away, too, probably scattered for miles around them.
There were deep gashes in the ground thirty yards long that sent a jolt of fear through Sarah. The tornado might be gone, but the devastation it left behind cast a light on how dangerous it would have been if they’d been caught out in it.
“What are those, Papa?” Sammy asked, moving forward a few steps, pointing at the gashes.
Bobby ran his eyes along the longest, deepest of the three that made their way from one side of the courtyard to the other. “Looks like something big and heavy got dragged past. Maybe a large tree trunk? Could have been a piece of farm equipment, too. The buggy is gone. Might have been that.”
Sarah heard disappointment in his voice. She didn’t think it would be six months to a year to do repairs. It was going to take a lot of money and hands to rebuild what was destroyed.
Sarah had never inquired about Bobby’s finances. She didn’t want to know, didn’t feel it was her place. But by the look of things, rebuilding wasn’t going to be cheap. He would have to pay his ranch hands to help, maybe hire a few more for the crew from town. The materials probably cost a pretty penny, too.
Sarah could only guess. She didn’t know anything about that kind of thing. She’d never purchased a buggy of her own. She didn’t know how much it would cost to replace that.
A sense of fear and anxiety made her chest tight. She looked at Bobby’s calm face as he scanned the destruction. “This is… just so horrible, Bobby,” she said, moving closer to him and slipping her hand into his. He looked down at her, his features serious and determined.
“It is,” he said, turning his eyes to Sammy, who was running toward the barn with Sand
y at her side. “Be careful, Sammy!” he called out. “Everything is unstable. Things might fall in the barn.”
“I’ll be careful, Papa!” Sammy called back.
“Do you really think it will only take about six months to a year?” Sarah was looking for confirmation and reassurance. She knew if Bobby was truly confident, he would reassure her.
He nodded. “Yeah, I don’t foresee any real problems. The men will help. I can hire more.”
Sarah felt a nervous tingle in her chest. She didn’t like discussing money matters. It was a man’s job to take care of that kind of thing. She had given her seamstress money to her father and it was never enough. That was the extent of her knowledge.
“Do you have enough money for that?”
Bobby gave her a surprised look, but he didn’t look offended by the question. He pulled in a quiet breath and looked around again. “I… everything will be fine. I can take care of this. You don’t have to worry about it. I have a little bit of savings.”
Sarah worried that he might be putting on a brave face. She didn’t believe he would lie to her. Not like she’d lied to him. Remembering her sin, Sarah clamped her mouth shut.
“And if we don’t have enough money, we’ll work something out,” Bobby said. “This is going to be expensive, that’s true. But I’ve got a lot of friends. Everyone will help out.”
Sarah gazed up at her handsome husband. She thought about the money Mr. Rochester had given her. She’d put it in a coffee can and tucked it up on the shelf in her closet, covering it with folded sweaters and blankets for the wintertime.
There had to be at last $300 in there. That could do so much. But would Bobby accept that money if she gave it to him? What would she say when he asked where she got it from? There was little chance she would have saved up that much from working as a seamstress. And the “orphanage” she said she came from wouldn’t have given her an allowance. If they did, it certainly wouldn’t have amounted to several hundred dollars.
“I’m gonna get the horses rounded up,” Bobby said, taking a step away from Sarah but keeping his eyes on her. “Why don’t you go around the house and see if there’s any other damage? If you see anything that looks really bad, come and get me. Like if the west wing is gone or something.”
Sarah shook her head, shuddering. “Don’t even say that. How horrible this all is. I’m so sorry you’ve lost so much, Bobby.” She dropped her eyes to the ground, suddenly overcome with emotions. She felt the sting of tears in her eyes and the next moment, Bobby’s arms were around her.
She was warm and felt loved. She could hear his heart beating hard in his chest. She wondered if he was more anxious than he was letting on.
It was in that moment that she decided she would find a way to present the money to Bobby without him knowing it was hers. She didn’t know how to explain she’d been given the money by a man who’d had dealings with her outlaw father and brothers and knew how desperate she was to leave that place.
She needed to tell him the truth about her past. But she wasn’t quite ready yet.
She hoped she would be soon.
“I… I’ll be riding around the property checking out the fences and getting the animals back where they belong.” His voice shook slightly as he pulled away from her. She looked up and he was gazing into her eyes.
She nodded. “All right,” she breathed.
She felt cold when he pulled away.
Chapter 17
Sarah had just disappeared back into the house when Sammy came running back to Bobby. He looked down at her, relief that she was perfectly fine mixing in with the physical ache from his wounds. She made him feel better just with her presence. He watched her form moving up the stairs and into the house through the front door.
She paused before she went in, looked over and locked eyes with him. For a moment, it felt like Bobby was suspended in time. She might as well have been inches away from him. He felt a connection to her so strong he would have run to her and swept her up in his arms if he didn’t think that would look foolish.
The moment was fleeting, but there was something about the intensity of the look on her face. She had something on her mind. He could only wonder what it was.
“Papa, Papa!” Sammy finally got his attention. He looked down at her again.
“I’m sorry, honey,” he said in an affectionate voice. “I was thinking. What were you saying?”
Sammy laughed. “Oh, Papa, you’re always in your head. I wanna go to the stream. I have to check on the fishes. But I don’t want to go alone. Will you come and keep me safe?”
“I have a lot to do, Sammy,” Bobby replied. “But I’ll tell you what. Let’s get a couple of the horses and you can ride around the property wherever you want as long as you don’t get off your horse. Okay?”
Sammy jumped up and down, clapping her hands. She sang out her reply of, “Yes, Papa!” as she twirled her way to the barn. Bobby watched her, amazed by her energy and positivity. Nothing brought that little girl down.
Then again, she didn’t know how much damage had really been done. Bobby’s heart sank when he saw the buildings ripped from their foundations and smashed just a few feet from where they’d been. The half-barn would have been amusing if he didn’t know that he would still have to build a new one.
The craters in the ground, the debris scattered everywhere… Bobby’s ranch was a mess. He hoped he hadn’t lost any animals, but that was touch and go. There was always a chance all the animals made it.
He hurried after Sammy, his anxiety over the chicken coop he’d just built mounting as he got closer to the other side of the barn. He’d chosen that corner because the chickens would have shade and sun almost all day long.
He halted, relief flooding him when he came around the corner and saw it still standing. He didn’t see any chickens, but he imagined they were hiding inside with the rooster.
“Papa, there’s the horses! I think… five, six, it’s all of them. I’m gonna go get Buttercup!”
He glanced over his shoulder to watch Sammy for a moment before turning his eyes back to the chicken coop. He hurried to the fencing, opened the gate and went inside, closing it behind him. It wasn’t far to the actual coop and he bent over, opening the door. There were small windows all over the coop so he could easily see that each and every bed had a hen in it. The rooster, who he called Bud, was pacing back and forth in the middle, looking mightily perturbed.
Many of the chickens fluttered their wings, flexing, shaking their heads back and forth and preening themselves.
The rooster looked affronted that a human had trespassed in their house. But once he showed his face, he knew the hens would come out of the coop and enjoy the sun of the coming day.
He backed out so as not to get attacked when the chickens started to come down from their perches. He hightailed it to the gate and got through before they were out in the yard around the coop.
Bobby looked toward Sammy, who was standing in the middle of a group of grazing horses. Not one of them was paying her any mind. Their tails swooshed back and forth, and he noticed with amusement that Sammy was moving from one horse to another, standing beside them at their hind end, her hair being swatted with the long horse tail.
He wondered if the horses were amused by the little human in their presence.
He lifted one hand and put his fingers in his mouth, whistling for his horse. The tall, copper-colored stallion lifted his head to the call and began to walk toward Bobby, nodding his large head up and down in greeting.
“There’s my boy,” Bobby murmured under his breath. “There’s my boy.”
Sammy heard Bobby call Worth and she did the same for her horse, whom she’d named Buttercup, which was appropriate since the horse was a fine yellow color unlike anything Bobby had seen before. He vividly remembered buying Buttercup at an auction in Collinsville and having to really put his money where his mouth was. He had to get that yellow horse for his daughter.
Daring to Start Again: An Inspirational Historical Romance Book Page 15
