Return to Homecoming Ranch (Pine River)

by Julia London

  The fluttery feeling began to dissipate. “I am staying away from him,” Libby said, and stepped back, so that his hand fell from her arm. Stay away from Ryan. What did Sam think that she would do after hearing him apologize? She wasn’t going to do anything. Except maybe seek clarification on her role with Alice and Max. And only because she believed that Ryan had opened a door.

  But as usual, Sam seemed to be reading her thoughts. His eyes narrowed and he leaned forward, so that she could see the flecks of brown and green in his eyes. “I mean it, Libby. Because I will put you in jail if I have to.”

  “Sam—you don’t have to worry!”

  He didn’t look as if he believed her. He actually looked a little worried. But he started back to the driver’s side of his truck.

  As Libby watched him walk away, a shadow that had been lurking on the edge of her thoughts suddenly emerged, leaping into focus. “Hey!” she said.

  He turned partially toward her.

  “Who else do you check on?”

  “What?”

  “You said you had one or two more people you had to check on. Millie, Tony, and who else?”

  Sam said nothing.

  “Who else, Sam?” she demanded, her pulse beginning to ratchet up. She moved closer to him, wanting to see his face when he said it. “What other crazy do you need to check on?”

  “First of all, no one is crazy—”

  “Who?” she persisted.

  He frowned. “You know who.”

  That was it, the thing that was bothering her—the idea that Sam might really believe she was nuts, just one hop and a skip away from a straitjacket. Did he believe that? Really believe that? In spite of their admittedly oppositional relationship, she liked him, she’d always liked him, and she wanted him to like her. She had assumed he was a friend. Not her keeper.

  And yet, he apparently viewed her as someone who was as much in need of being checked on as Millie Bagley and Tony D’Angelo. The realization stung much deeper than Libby would have guessed and she felt oddly betrayed by him. “You don’t need to check on me. I had a bad experience. I reacted badly, and I’m dealing with it. But that doesn’t mean I need supervision, or whatever it is you are doing.”

  “I know,” he said in a patient tone that sounded dangerously close to Dr. Huber’s.

  Libby’s heart began to race with anger. She hated being in this position, of somehow having fallen into a category of citizens who needed to be checked on from time to time. “Okay, Sam,” she said, a little breathlessly. She rubbed her palms on her skirt. “I’ll be honest. It may be possible that Ryan and I will agree to some happy medium—”

  “A what?”

  “For the sake of the kids,” she added hastily, and threw up a hand to stop him before he began his lecture. “That’s all. But I need you to know that I am dealing with my issues as best I can and I am moving on. So . . . so don’t lump me in with everyone else you think needs to be looked after.”

  Sam stilled. His expression turned as dark as she’d ever seen it. It was thunderous, the kind of look that could make a person quiver. Come to think of it, Libby had never seen Sam Winters angry. Frustrated maybe, but this . . . this was angry.

  She didn’t like the way he was looking at her, or the way he started to move toward her, one deliberate step at a time. She scrambled backward and instantly bumped into her car.

  “Libby, listen to me. I am going to say this once. After that, you can do whatever you want, but I am going to try and get through to you one last time. You and Ryan are never getting back together. Ever. It’s just not going to happen, do you understand?”

  His adamancy was surprising. “I didn’t say I was getting back with him! And anyway, how do you know?” she demanded.

  “Because I know,” he snapped. He leaned forward, bracing himself against her car with one arm, locking her in between him, the vehicle, and his rebuke. “He let you go. Dumb as that is, he did. He’s moved on. He’s moved on so much that he got a restraining order against you.”

  “Because he was mad—”

  “Because he is done,” Sam angrily interrupted her. “Don’t create some fantasy in your head. Leave him alone. Don’t make me have to arrest you.”

  She didn’t like what he was implying. Ryan had apologized—it wasn’t as if she was fantasizing about it. She was almost certain she wasn’t. “He just said it this morning!” she insisted. “You heard him. He said he wished things hadn’t happened like they did, and that he was sorry, and to let the dust settle. What does that mean? It means he is sorry!”

  “Jesus Christ,” Sam muttered incredulously.

  Libby dipped under his arm and put some distance between herself and those piercing hazel eyes. “Don’t come and check on me. I don’t need you to hold my hand and tell me what to do. I know what I’m doing.”

  Okay, maybe she didn’t know exactly, but this was her problem. Not his.

  Sam pressed his lips together, as if he was working hard to bite back a few choice words. “Okay,” he said tersely, and abruptly turned around and walked back to his truck.

  Libby watched him get in, back up, and drive on. She watched his truck disappear around the corner.

  Her breath was still coming in angry gulps.

  Sam was wrong. He had to be wrong. Because it wasn’t impossible that Libby and Ryan could patch things up, at least enough that she might see Alice and Max. And besides, it wasn’t Sam’s business. This was her life, not his. Sam didn’t know what had gone on between Libby and Ryan. No one knew but her and Ryan. And Libby knew Ryan well enough to know that it took a lot for him to say that he wished things hadn’t ended.

  She would be the first to admit that she couldn’t be sure what had been real between her and Ryan after all that had happened. But what she did know was that it couldn’t all have been a lie. I’m crazy about you, baby, crazy in love. I can’t live without you and I never will.

  That’s what Ryan had said the night he asked her to move in with him and the kids.

  How did love like that suddenly disappear?

  It didn’t.

  People made mistakes. Ryan had admitted as much to her twice this week. Alice was calling her every afternoon. It wasn’t ridiculous to imagine some level of reconciliation could happen, if only for the sake of Alice and Max. Because no matter what had happened between her and Ryan, her relationship and her love for those two kids was as real and as deep as anything she had ever felt in her life. She wasn’t going to walk away from that. Alice and Max meant more to her than anything else in the world.

  Sam may not get that, but he didn’t have to get it. This was Libby’s life.

  She got into her car and drove to town, pulling into a spot on Main Street, just outside Tag’s Outfitters. She was still brooding over Sam’s anger, and as she looked up at the door of Tag’s, she was suddenly reminded of a sunny afternoon in early May. It was the first time she’d come to town since Ryan had sat her down at the kitchen bar, had even filled her wineglass for her, and had told her that she had to leave. That he was through, that he didn’t love her anymore and hadn’t for a long time.

  “Through?” Libby had said. “How can you be through? What are you talking about?” She’d been so confused. Of course she knew that things were a little strained between them, but she never would have guessed that he was thinking to end it, that she was headed out the door.

  “Afraid so,” he’d said. “It’s just not working for me. I think it’s best if you leave.”

  “Leave?” she’d all but shouted. “There’s no discussion? No talking? You just announce you’re done and I have to leave? Just when did you think I was going to do that?”

  She would never forget the look he’d given her. It was indifferent, uncaring. “Well . . . now,” he’d said with a shrug.

  Everything had blurred after that. Wine had spilled along with her tears. There had been a lot of shouting, a lot of accusations, but Ryan had insisted there was no one else, there was noth
ing but Libby and a love he didn’t possess anymore.

  And then Alice and Max had come home.

  Libby closed her eyes, unwilling to think of the moment Alice and Max had understood what Ryan had done.

  Libby shoved angrily against her car door to open it, and stepped onto the sidewalk.

  She remembered something more, as she hitched her purse over her shoulder. Libby had nowhere to go and had moved in with her mother. After two weeks of stumbling around blindly, painfully, her mother had insisted she get out and get on with her life. As if Libby hadn’t spent the last four years creating a family that was now gone. As if Libby were wasting time. Libby had tried to move on.

  She remembered walking down this street, on her way to yoga. Yoga would center her, yoga would ease her, she’d reasoned. It was right here that she’d run into Sam. Literally. She’d been darting around tourists and had even clipped a mailbox in her haste, her mind racing, her thoughts in another place altogether. She’d had her yoga mat strung across her back.

  She didn’t notice Sam until he spoke to her. “Libby, hello,” he’d said, and he had smiled so warmly that she’d had to fight the urge to burst into a sudden torrent of tears. That happened quite a lot to her in the beginning.

  “Oh, hey Sam.” She’d slowed down, even taking a step backward to keep from passing him. She’d smiled, too, or at least she thought she had. But Sam had instantly dipped down to have a closer look at her with those knowing eyes.

  “Are you okay?”

  “Me? Sure!” she’d said. Because after a couple of weeks back home, Libby had learned to say everything was okay so her mother would not hover and harp. “How about you? I heard about you rescuing that couple on the Divisidaro Trail last week. Dani Boxer is singing your praises. She said they were scared to death. They were staying at the Lodge and told her all about it.”

  Sam had chuckled, and Libby had realized then that, judging by his casual manner, he hadn’t heard about her. He was just being nice when he’d asked how she was. “Dani is quick to sing praises,” he’d said. “They weren’t very lost. They hadn’t strayed from the trail nearly as far as they thought they had. But then again, they had a special glow about them from all the weed they’d been smoking.”

  “Aha,” Libby said with a grin. “The rolling papers should come with instructions, shouldn’t they? Please do not hike while stoned.”

  Sam grinned. “Going to yoga?”

  “Yes. Are you coming?” she’d asked and, grateful for the few normal moments, had playfully poked him in the shoulder. “The offer still stands, you know. You never took me up on it. Where is that yoga mat, anyway?”

  “In my office. Right between my desk and the wall. I’m still mulling it over.”

  “Liar,” she’d said. “You told me that last time I saw you. It’s been over a year now.”

  “I like to mull things to death.”

  She’d actually laughed a little, because so did she. “So how is that back of yours, anyway?”

  “Stiff as a board,” he’d admitted.

  “Knew it,” she’d said. “I better get going or I’ll be late. Have a good day, Sam.” She’d moved to pass him, and had accidently brushed against him when she did. Sam had surprised her by impulsively catching her hand in his, and she remembered thinking her hand felt so small in his. As small as she felt inside.

  “Hey . . . are you sure you’re okay?” he’d asked, peering closely at her.

  Libby could remember the swell of gratitude that he cared enough to ask, to even notice. In those weeks after Ryan told her he didn’t love her anymore, she had needed that reassurance. “I’m sure,” she’d said. She wasn’t too convincing, because he’d arched a dubious brow. Libby had sighed. “I’ve just got a lot on my mind. My dad is really ill, and . . . and . . . you know, that puts a strain on things at home.” It wasn’t a lie. She’d even asked Ryan if her preoccupation with her father’s slow death had caused him to change his mind about her. Ryan had said no, but as nothing else made sense, Libby wasn’t sure she believed him. But to Sam, she’d shrugged helplessly and said, “It’s no big deal. Just life beating down the door, as my grandmother used to say.”

  “I’m sorry to hear that,” Sam said, and he had looked sincere. “I hope everything works out.”

  “Oh, it will,” Libby had said, because that’s what she did best, she assured everyone that everything was okay. “It’s just a bump in the road.” That bump had suddenly felt insurmountable. Libby had pulled her hand free of Sam’s and had started to walk, but had paused and looked over her shoulder.

  He’d been watching her, and Libby had felt a rivulet of something sweet run through her. “Sure you don’t want to come and do some down dogs with me?”

  “I’m sure,” he’d said with a wink.

  “Suit yourself, Stiffneck.” She’d moved on, falling back into melancholy.

  Turns out, she didn’t go to yoga that day, either. She just kept walking, past the studio, down to the park, where she had sat on a bench and cried some more.

  No more of that. She hadn’t cried over Ryan Spangler for a very long time now.

  EIGHT

  Sam was up before dawn and stumbled into his kitchen, grimaced at the dishes still in the sink from last night’s attempt at chili, and dragged his fingers through his hair. He grabbed a cup from the shelf and stuck it under his new single-cup coffeemaker. Coffee was the one vice Sam allowed himself, and he had fallen in love with this machine. It was probably the most expensive thing he’d bought for himself in a year.

  Hell, it was probably the only thing he’d bought for himself in a year.

  He turned it on, scratched his chin, felt the stubble of a beard there. He’d been off-duty yesterday, and when one lived alone, one tended not to groom one’s face quite as often as one ought. He picked out a coffee—wild mountain blueberry—and jammed it into the cup holder. As the coffee brewed, he padded back across his little house, into his bedroom.

  Admittedly, he wasn’t the neatest guy in the world. He had clothes strewn around, draped over the back of a worn-out armchair he’d rescued from an eviction a few years ago. He sorted through that stack of clothing, found some jeans, and pulled them on. He stuffed his feet into his house shoes, pulled on a jacket with sheepskin lining, and retraced his steps. With his morning cup of joe liberally doctored with cream and sugar, Sam stepped outside onto the deck in the back of his house. He paused like he did most mornings, standing as still as he could to breathe in the quiet, crisp, cold mountain air.

  His place was set back in the woods, a little two-bedroom log house with a big open kitchen and living space, a huge expanse of deck under the firs out back, a garden, and the work shed he’d built from logs and stones at one end of the deck.

  A mountain stream cut across the back of his property, home to a family of river trout that had been there about as long as he had. He had a fenced meadow beside the house that was full of late summer wildflowers, and a small barn for the horses he kept for those rare occasions he had to go deep into the mountains to rescue a stranded hiker.

  As a rural area deputy, Sam was assigned to the backwater, remote parts of Pinero County that could not be easily reached by main street emergency responders. When Mr. Gomez had had a heart attack two years ago, it had taken an ambulance forty-five minutes to reach him. Mr. Gomez didn’t make it. Now, Sam had a defibrillator in his truck. He was a one-man show, the first line of defense. The man with the star who showed up to keep a lid on things until the cavalry could arrive.

  He had an office and a small holding cell rented from the Pine River police department, which he used only rarely. Most of his work involved crimes like cattle rustling, poaching, and the occasional lost hiker. His workload was pretty simple now, very different than it had been back in the days he was patrolling the more populated part of the county. People who lived this far out tended to be pretty self-sufficient, taking care of trouble on their own.

  The job suited the man
Sam believed he’d become. He wasn’t especially close to his family. His mother, in Dallas, had remarried after the bitter divorce from his father. His sister, Jan, was a financial advisor in Pittsburgh with a family. Sam heard from his father occasionally, but his dad had married a woman from Mexico and spent most of his time there.

  For Sam, this little house in the mountains of Colorado near Pine River was as good a place as any to be.

  It was certainly the easiest place to be.

  Sam walked to the work shed and stepped inside. He flipped a switch and light erupted from a pair of single bulbs swinging overhead. He sipped from his coffee and looked around at the birdhouses stacked on the shelves. There were dozens of them, in various colors, shapes, and sizes. This was his hobby, the thing that kept him busy and his mind occupied on long winter nights. His birdhouses were elaborate, too: castles, multi-level houses with pitched roofs and steeples, condominiums. He made them in shapes of recreational vehicles, boats, airplanes, and spaceships. He’d made one that looked like a hamburger, only because it amused him.

  He was pretty good at making birdhouses, but most of his creations stayed here. He had no desire to sell them. He just kept making them, kept stacking them around his work shed and hanging them in the trees around his house.

  Once, his pal Dirk had said, “People would pay good money for these,” as he’d admired one that was fashioned after a vintage Cadillac. “Especially rich people in Aspen.”

  Maybe Dirk was right, but to Sam, it felt almost like an invasion of his privacy and his solitude to let anyone know that his birdhouses existed, much less sell them. He’d given a couple away. One to Millie, hoping that would soften her up. It hadn’t. One to Leo Kendrick, who spent a lot of time looking out windows. But other than that, this was something he preferred to keep to himself. It was his thing, his quiet pastime, his testament to his life up on the mountain: simple and solitary. Safe.

  Sam put aside his coffee and selected a piece of tin to fashion into a birdhouse roof. He glanced at the little building plan he’d made and tacked to the wall, and began to hammer the tin into shape.