Run Wild With Me

by Sandra Chastain

  “Aren’t you even going to defend yourself, Sam? If your head didn’t break the windshield on that truck, how did you injure it?”

  “It was all a lie, wasn’t it, Andrea? All this talk about trust and acceptance. Arcadia is no different from any other place. Your locks just aren’t out in the open where they can be seen. Well, I’ve been this route before, darlin’, so it’s up to you. You do whatever you have to.”

  Andrea parked the car at the side of the police station, walked around to open his door, and stood waiting for Sam to precede her inside.

  “Don’t make me lock you up, Sam. Tell me the truth.”

  “The truth? Wouldn’t help, darlin’. In this case the truth sounds like a lie. Besides, if your fine citizens have to choose between an outsider and a future governor, I don’t have the chance of a snow-ball in hell.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “No? Well I do.” Sam went into the cell and sat down on Brad’s favorite bunk. “I think I’ll wait for Buck.”

  Andrea closed the cell door and leaned her face against the bars. How could she defend Sam if he wouldn’t defend himself?

  She was scared. The circumstances were just too damning. The equipment thefts had begun just before Sam came. Even Buck had thought that some local person was involved. But she knew everybody in Arcadia. They were her people. They couldn’t be guilty of international theft, no matter what Buck had thought. It had to be an outsider, and though she knew it couldn’t be true, the inescapable truth was that the only outsider was Sam.

  Round and round the argument went in her mind. And then she remembered Sam in her living room, carrying all those balloons and flowers. Trust? Duty? She didn’t know anymore where to draw the line. All she knew was that Sam couldn’t be a thief. She paced up and down. Acutely aware that Sam was in the cell behind her, she felt as if she were on fire.

  She’d accepted him from the beginning as a temporary part of her life. Then he’d begun to make plans for the future, and she’d begun to believe. “I love you, Stormy girl,” he’d said—just once. But she’d never told him that she loved him too.

  “Sam?”

  There was no answer. She could hear him breathing, so she knew that he was aware of her.

  “Sam, please listen to me. I may not have a chance to say this again before they take you over to Cottonboro, but I want you to know …” She caught her breath. Her legs were weak, and she had a hard time standing.

  “What, Andrea?” His voice was wooden, expressionless.

  “I want you to know that I love you. Arresting you was the hardest thing I ever had to do in my life. You have to understand that I did it to protect you. It was my duty.”

  “Is that what you call it?”

  “Yes, Sam, my duty. After all, the evidence was there, so obvious that everyone could see.”

  “Do you really believe I’m guilty, Andrea?”

  “Of course not. But that isn’t the point now. Oh, Sam, tell me the truth. I trust you.” She was holding on to the bars now, staring inside at the man watching her silently from the shadows.

  “You say you do, Stormy girl, but I see the questions in your eyes. That tells me what your words don’t, that trust isn’t synonymous with love.”

  “Oh, Sam, I do love you.”

  “Then I suggest you ask Ed what happened to my face. It must be obvious why Ed’s trying to pin this on me. He’s determined not to lose you, darlin’.”

  “Ed? He’s just been drinking. He’s acting like a fool, but I’ve known Ed all my life. I trust …”

  “Ed belongs in Arcadia. He’s lived here all his life, so that automatically makes him trustworthy. And that’s what I mean, Andrea.”

  Andrea watched as Sam swung his feet around and lay back on the bunk. He’d closed himself off from her, and she felt her heart split with pain she’d never felt before. Sam wasn’t guilty, and she’d have to prove it. She wasn’t going to let her town become part of the dark places in his past.

  Why had Sam asked Ed to explain what happened to his forehead? There was something wrong. There’d been something wrong back at the accident site. If heavy equipment had been stored in the county, Ed ought to have known where. He covered the county from one end to the other every day. He knew how much space was required. He had large storage areas and some of that same kind of equipment himself. Ed ought … Ed!

  Andrea turned around and left the station in a rush, taking time only to let Agnes know where she was heading.

  A half hour later Andrea was vaulting the security fence around Ed’s storage area. The man inside the warehouse must have thought she had backup, because he didn’t even try to escape when she opened the door and looked inside. She cuffed him to the building, listening to his protest that he wasn’t the thief. He’d been hired to drive the rig, that’s all. She could just check with the man who’d hired him—Ed Pinyon.

  Andrea put in a call for Buck on her radio, asking him to pick up Ed and meet her at Pinyon Construction’s equipment barn. In less than ten minutes a state-patrol car was pulling in with the major, Lewis, Buck, and a subdued Ed Pinyon inside.

  Lewis accompanied Andrea and her prisoner back to Arcadia, where they would sort out the details.

  “What made you think of looking for the driver there, Andy?” Buck asked as they herded the two men inside the police station.

  “It was Sam’s idea,” she admitted, “something he said. Sam! Will you unlock his cell and let him out, Buck?” Andrea asked.

  “Not necessary,” Sam said quietly, stepping into the corridor. “The cell was never locked to begin with.”

  Andrea let out a deep sigh of relief. She’d known that the cell was open. He hadn’t left. Now he was standing there, looking at her with a sad expression carved in deep lines across his face. His silence made the great wrong they’d done him even harder to bear. She’d said he was innocent, but there’d been a tiny doubt that she hadn’t been able to hide.

  Sam had known the truth all along. Sam had had to be hurt for her to understand the truth. Somehow she’d made Arcadia and the people who lived there her own security blanket, and one of them had let her down.

  She had to explain. “It was Ed. He was using his yard to store the stolen equipment.”

  “Oh?”

  Even now she was avoiding the truth. She was giving Sam the facts when what she ought to be doing was saying how sorry she was for even suspecting him.

  “Ed’s business was never quite as successful as he led everyone to believe,” the major added. “In order to expand enough to land the big jobs, he had to have equipment. Equipment cost money. He didn’t have it, and he couldn’t admit he was overextended—not when he was being groomed for political office. The thieves got wind of his problem and worked out an exchange.”

  “I don’t think he realized what he was getting into,” Buck said in his defense. “Then he got caught up in his own success. He never expected to be arrested, but if anything ever happened, he figured that being engaged to you granted him protection. Having his business here provided the perfect hiding place for machinery being resold in South America, and Ed got the equipment he needed.”

  “Why, Ed?” Andrea had to ask. “Why do this to me? I thought we were friends. I don’t understand.”

  “I cared about you, Andrea. I know you don’t think so. But I did. After the truck crashed, and you said that you were going to marry Sam, I think I went a little crazy. I’m sorry,” Ed said with a waver in his voice.” I was going to be the governor, and you were going to be my wife. I never meant to hurt you … I mean …”

  “Oh, Ed. What did you do to Sam?”

  “I went by Sam’s place on the way to the picnic. I was going to tell him that you were mine. I didn’t know what to do. My driver had disappeared. The FBI and the sheriff were combing the county. It all came to a head. I hit him. Can you believe it, Andy? I never hit anybody in my life, but I hit Sam, knocked him into his electric saw and cut his forehead.
<
br />   “Then when he came to the picnic and I saw that scratch on his head, I knew that was all I needed.” Ed’s voice had trailed off, and he looked at the floor, shame and defeat evident in his face.

  Andrea looked at Ed, the man she’d trusted simply because he’d lived his whole life in Arcadia. She’d been such a blind fool. For one crazy minute at the picnic she’d almost let him make her believe that Sam was guilty. How could she ever make it up to Sam?

  “Oh, Sam.” Andrea turned to apologize to the man she’d wronged so badly. But he was gone.

  “Go after him, babe,” Buck urged.

  From the doorway, Andrea saw Sam walking slowly up the highway. His back was straight and proud. Two drivers stopped to offer Sam a ride, but he refused.

  She couldn’t go after him. What she’d done was unforgivable. She’d put locks on any doors she might have opened once. It was too late.

  Ten

  Andrea left the front porch and walked up the hill through the apple orchard in the moonlight. She couldn’t throw off the tight pain of her ever-present tears as she let herself remember. It had been three days, and nobody had seen Sam. He hadn’t answered his phone. Even Otis hadn’t been able to rouse him.

  Crickets and katydids trilled a chorus in the silence, and fireflies danced through the branches. But the peace and beauty were gone. Andrea knew Buck didn’t understand her behavior. Even she didn’t understand why she let Sam walk out of her life. By now he was probably out of the state, gone who knows where, and she couldn’t blame him. Andrea leaned her head against the apple tree under which Sam had kissed her. She tried desperately not to think. If she didn’t think, she wouldn’t hurt so bad.

  “It’s not going to work, Andy.”

  “Buck! What are you doing up here? You shouldn’t be walking on that leg.”

  “I’m all right, Andy. I can’t stand by and watch you hurt any longer.”

  “I’ll be fine, Buck, really I will.” She drew herself upright, hoping he couldn’t see that she’d been crying.

  “Andrea, I’ve never interfered with your decisions before. When you left Arcadia for the city, I hurt, but I let you go. When you came back here wounded and silent, I didn’t pry. Then Sam came along, and I saw you come to life again. Now I’m going to say something I should have said long ago.”

  “Please don’t give me advice, Buck. I’ll have to work out my problems by myself.”

  “This isn’t your problem, at least not completely. I’ve had a hand in it too. It’s about your mother. I’ve never really talked to you about her, and I think it’s time I did, Andrea. I met her while I was in the veterans’ hospital. There was someone else I cared for. She married another man. I got drunk and married your mother. I always told you that she left here because she couldn’t stand small-town life. That wasn’t true. She left because I never let her forget that she was my second choice. You know when I found out that I loved her? After I’d driven her away.”

  “Oh, Buck. I’m so sorry. Not for me, but for you. You must have suffered very much.”

  “I was a damn fool. Once I realized it, I should have gone after her, but I couldn’t. I was a coward. Don’t you make the same mistake. If you want Sam Farley, go after him.”

  Andrea didn’t know whether she quite believed the story Buck had told her about her mother, though she appreciated the reason he’d done so. She’d known all along that her mother was a nurse from the hospital where Buck had been treated. She remarried the year after she left Arcadia and was killed in a car accident the next. Andrea had learned the truth a long time ago.

  “Oh, Daddy, I don’t know. This is different. Sam isn’t like you. He’d never forgive me.”

  “Well, it’s your life, but I wanted you to know.” Buck started clumsily back down the hill, leaning heavily on the cane he’d substituted for crutches. When he reached the fence, he paused and called over his shoulder, “Andy, I hate to intrude. I know you have your own problems, but I think I’d like a ride over to Louise Roberts’s house.”

  “Now?” Andrea asked in surprise.

  “Yep!” Buck answered firmly. “You’ve heard of ‘physician, heal thyself.’ I’m about to take my own advice.”

  Andrea followed Buck back down the hill. She got her purse and her keys, and started out the door. Stopping, she turned and raced back to her bedroom, running a comb through her hair and touching a lipstick to her lips. She told herself that she was checking to make sure her eyes weren’t puffy from crying.

  “Do you want me to come back for you later, Buck?”

  “No, I don’t plan to be home before sometime tomorrow. I think I’d better tell you that Louise is the girl who married somebody else. Maybe I’ve been given another chance. You’d better think about that too, Andy.”

  Louise? Andrea smiled. Somehow Louise and Buck seemed right together.

  She let Buck out and watched him disappear into the darkness of Louise Roberts’s back porch. Andrea backed the Bronco slowly down the drive. Maybe Buck was right about taking chances. She turned toward the Hines place. It seemed a lifetime since she’d made her first trip over there at night. As if on cue, a rumble of thunder groaned in the distance, and a flash of summer lightning split the sky. There was a storm coming.

  She expected the house to be dark, boarded up again. But there was a faint light shining through the trees as she drove up the drive. Even in the darkness she could see that the shutters had a fresh coat of bright yellow paint. A gust of wind swept through the screened porch, moving a newly painted swing back and forth.

  Andrea’s heart took a sudden glad little lurch. He was still there. She sat in the darkness for a long time, trying to form a plan, but her mind jumped from one idea to another, and finally she knew that she’d simply have to face him and hope that he was still a man willing to take chances too.

  Nervously she got out of the Bronco and walked up to the back porch. She started to knock, then tried the door instead. This time it wasn’t locked. She hadn’t known how important that was until she found it open. Suddenly she began to feel good.

  “Evening, Chief. Aren’t you coming in?”

  The glow of a cigarette lit up the porch for a second, then died. He was sitting there bare-chested, a square of white thrown across his lap in the darkness.

  Andrea pushed open the screen and walked inside. “You’re smoking,” she said awkwardly. “I didn’t know you smoked.”

  “I didn’t, before.”

  A rush of uncertainty engulfed Andrea. She could hear the sound of her breathing in the silence. And her heart was pounding so, she knew it must be audible to the man sitting at the end of the porch. Her mind went blank, and she couldn’t think of anything intelligent to say.

  Sam stood up. “I’m glad you came.”

  “I thought you would leave.”

  A night bird called out in the distance. Andrea had never been so uncertain of her actions. Suddenly she was drifting, floundering around without knowing exactly where she was going.

  “Damn!” Sam’s sudden movement brought a startled scream from Andrea as he put out his cigarette and dashed inside. There was a squeak, a yelp—“Sawblades and sledgehammers! They’re burned!”—and a clatter of noise.

  Andrea followed the sounds to the kitchen. What she saw was mind-shattering. There was a thin dusting of flour all over the kitchen floor and cabinets. Crumpled empty chocolate-chip bags were everywhere. An open can of shortening, a half-empty canister of sugar, and an almost-empty gallon of milk covered the work area.

  Standing in the midst of this whirlwind was a barefoot Sam Farley, wearing flour-splotched jeans and a white apron. At his feet was a cookie tin and a dozen blackened cookies spilled into broken crumbs all over the floor.

  Sam looked up, an expression of pure frustration on his face. “I burned them.”

  “What are you doing, Sam?”

  “What does it look like? I’m baking cookies. Like my grandmother used to make.” He leaned down and began to cle
an up the mess, depositing it into a can already overflowing with what looked like gooey, half-cooked mistakes.

  Andrea took a long look around. On shelves behind open cabinet doors, on the dining-room table behind her, and in the breakfast room in the kitchen were plates and plates of different kinds of cookies.

  “Why, Sam? Why all these cookies?”

  “To go with the lemonade, of course.”

  “Of course. Why didn’t I think of that?”

  “They go with the swing on the front porch.”

  “How long have you been practicing?”

  “Well, let’s put it this way. If the birds like cookies, they’ll be fed for the next couple of years. I never dreamed making cookies could be so hard.” He turned back to his table and began to put his cooking supplies away. “Good thing you finally got here. This is my last sack of sugar.”

  “ ‘Finally got here’? You mean you expected me?”

  “Sooner or later. It’s that trust you were talking about. I guess you did too good a job convincing me about this town. I just waited out here, having faith.” Sam placed the cookie tin on the counter and turned his eyes to the floor as he spoke. “Are you going to marry me, Andrea Fleming?”

  A great joy swept over her. He’d waited for her. He’d known she would come. She felt tears of happiness well up in her eyes. “Oh yes, Sam Farley. I’m going to marry you, if you’ll have me.”

  The sound of thunder rumbled closer, and a sharp breeze sprang up, ruffling the trees outside the kitchen window. Sam looked up and slowly untied his apron, allowing it to float to the floor. Andrea felt her heart skip as their gazes locked.

  “Are you sure, Stormy darlin’? I’m still an outsider.”

  “Oh, Sam, you were right about Arcadia—not me. It’s just a town, a place, with all kinds of people, neither all good nor all bad. I’ve been such a blind fool. I needed a sanctuary, and I made Arcadia more than it could ever be.”

  “But you weren’t completely wrong, Andrea. Arcadia isn’t perfect, but it is special. That’s what my mother understood. That’s the sanctuary Arcadia offers both of us—a place where mothers still make cookies for their children, and sit in swings spinning wonderful tales of the outside world. We’ve found a place for our love to grow, a place to belong.”