The Horseman's Bride Read online

  For a moment he thought she might refuse, and then what would he do? He couldn’t physically remove her. It took every bit of strength he possessed to simply stand there. He couldn’t move two feet without the cane, which required his left hand. As for his right hand...it was useless. He was useless.

  Fortunately, he didn’t have to find an alternative action. She took a step back, then another, before spinning around and hurrying down the steps. She swung onto Buck’s back with an ease he would never again manage and gathered the reins in both hands—another feat he would never achieve. He hated her for it, hated her kids for sitting their mounts so effortlessly. He hated everyone in the entire damn world.

  Most especially himself.

  The woman wheeled Buck around, then paused to look over her shoulder at him. “Welcome home, Mr. Rafferty. I hope you find what you’re looking for here.” Then she rode off with a daughter on either side.

  The privacy to drown himself in self-pity, sorrow and booze. That was all he was looking for. That, and peace.

  He watched until they were out of sight, then turned away from the door In daylight the house looked worse than it had last night. The rugs his mother had spread everywhere were long gone, leaving scarred, scraped wooden planks uncovered. The wallpaper was peeling and still showed where all the pictures had hung. With no curtains or blinds to filter its light, the sun shone harshly, unforgivingly, across the room. It was an ugly, depressing place. Perfect for finishing out an ugly, depressing life.

  His limp was worse than usual as he made his way to the couch. He’d left his duffel on the floor beside it. He couldn’t kneel down to get it, didn’t trust himself to bend over without losing his balance. Instead he braced his good leg against the sofa and used his cane to hook the rigid handle.

  Inside the bag was a couple of changes of clothing, some papers, some money, a few old photos. He ignored all that and dug deeper, through towels and toiletries, to the pill bottle that had shifted to the bottom. Clutching it tightly between thumb and forefinger, he forced himself through the dining room and into the kitchen.

  Joelle had seen to everything. There were groceries in the cabinets, along with mismatched dishes, pots and pans, and food in the refrigerator. He picked up the orange juice on the top shelf, then put it back and reached for a beer instead.

  The bedroom was another difficult journey, but he made it, easing onto the bed, leaning his cane against the wall. It fell to the floor with a clatter, but he didn’t care. Slumping back against the headboard, he uncapped the pill bottle, then the bottle of beer

  There’d been a time, not long after he’d left Heartbreak, when he’d drunk too much Now, as he washed down pain pills with cold beer, he thought that maybe lately he hadn’t drunk enough. Maybe he would get lucky and find his way out of the mess his life had become.

  Not that he’d been lucky in a long time

  Not since he’d run off with his best friend’s girl.

  It was the middle of the breakfast rush in downtown Heartbreak when the phone beside the cash register rang. Juggling two plates of fried eggs with all the greasy side orders, Shay Stephens leaned across the counter to snag the receiver “Heartbreak Café.”

  “Hey, Shay.”

  “Magnolia, hi. Hold on a minute.” Letting the receiver dangle by its cord, she delivered the breakfasts, grabbed the coffeepot and refilled three cups, then swooped past the counter to grab the phone again. “Listen, I’m really busy here. Can I call you back in an hour or so?”

  “Easy’s back.”

  Shay stiffened, and the coffeepot slid from her hand to the floor, glass shattering, steaming coffee splattering across the tile. Everyone in the café was looking her way, and she knew at least a few were asking if she was all right, but she couldn’t hear their voices over the roaring in her ears. She couldn’t hear anything at all as she sank against the counter for support. She couldn’t stand. Couldn’t think. Couldn’t breathe.

  Olivia’s voice cut through the roar—soft, Southern, concerned. “The girls talked me into a ride before school this morning, and we saw this truck at his house and went up to make sure everything was all right, and—He’s back, Shay.”

  Her chest hurt, and for one awful moment she thought she was going to lose the breakfast she’d fixed herself three hours ago. Then her stomach settled, she managed to breathe, and the killing ache in her chest eased to a dull throb. She even managed to make her jaw work, to get words out in a coherent thought, though the voice sounded nothing like hers. “How is he?”

  “He told us to get the hell off his property and never come back.” Olivia hesitated. “He was very angry. Very...bitter.”

  “How did he look?”

  “I couldn’t tell. He was inside in the shadows and the screen door...” The rest trailed away.

  Shay knew what the screen door was like. She’d been out to that house more times than she wanted to admit in the past six years, and Olivia knew it. She’d found her out there not too long ago, sobbing on the porch like some heartsick teenager. Though it’d been a long time since her teen years—half a lifetime—the first part of the description was sadly accurate. She’d been heartsick all of her adult life.

  “What are you going to do, Shay?”

  She combed her fingers through her hair, then suddenly realized that Amalia was on her knees, cleaning the mess she’d made. “I don’t know,” she said abruptly. “I’ll have to think about that. Listen, I’ve got to go. We’re awfully busy. Thanks for calling me.”

  Without waiting for a response from her fnend, she hung up, then pulled the young waitress to her feet. “My mess, Amalia. I’ll clean it.”

  “But I don’t mind—”

  “Neither do I.” She pulled the paper towels from Amalia’s hand, then nudged her toward the kitchen. “You’ve got orders up. Go ahead and take care of them.”

  She knelt carefully on the wooden floor. The waitress had already disposed of the bits of broken glass and the plastic handle and mopped up most of the coffee. Now Shay finished that task, then dipped a towel in the bucket of soapy water and began scrubbing the wood.

  So Easy was home and living in his folks’ house. Bud and Betsey Rafferty had abandoned the place not long after the scandal. That was how they’d always referred to Guthne’s jilting—how they’d always referred to her. She was the scandal that had ruined their precious, innocent son’s life. Everything that had gone wrong for Easy from that day forward—and probably retroactively, too—had been her fault in their eyes. No doubt, they’d probably found some way to blame his accident on her, too.

  It seemed she was destined to get her news about Easy here in the café. She’d been working the day one of his old rodeo buddies had passed through town back in June, and he’d told her about the one-car wreck that had put Easy in a succession of hospitals and ended his career.

  Some suspected he’d been drinking when he’d lost control of his truck and had driven into a ravine in the New Mexico mountains, and she could believe that. He’d become a heavy drinker—her fault, too. Some thought he’d just been tired, pushing too hard to get from one rodeo to the next, and she could believe that, too. From the moment he’d asked her to forget Guthrie and their wedding and leave Heartbreak with him, he’d been driven. She was probably to blame for those demons, too.

  Everything in the whole damn world was her fault, and she’d paid. She’d paid so damn dearly.

  But not as dearly as Easy.

  “You keep scrubbing that floor, you’re gonna take the varnish right off,” a voice murmured near her ear

  Shay blinked, looked at the sparkling floor and the paper towel she’d scrubbed to shreds, then raised her gaze to Reese Barnett. The sheriff was watching her with a look that was partly amused and partly concerned. He offered her a hand and pulled her easily to her feet, then moved the bucket out of the way for good measure.

  “I take it that phone call was bad news.”

  “Phone call?”

  H
e guided her behind the counter to the cash register, then handed her his bill and five bucks to cover it. “Remember? The phone rang, you answered, turned white as a ghost, then dropped the coffee? Is there a problem?”

  “N-no. Not at all.” Just that her entire life was a mess and threatened to get even messier.

  “Are we still on for tonight?”

  “Tonight?”

  “Dinner in Buffalo Plains?”

  Right. Dinner. She and Reese were supposed to have dinner in the county seat, then go back to her house before he headed home and she started wallowing in regrets. It was what she did—how she’d passed the last six years, using other men, nice men, men she cared about. Men she pretended she might fall in love with, even though she knew before the first date that it wasn’t going to happen. Still, she tried, and when she failed, she blamed herself and Easy and damned them both.

  “Reese, I...”

  He waited patiently, suspecting what she was about to say. She could see in his eyes that he expected the same sort of brush-off she’d given every man before him, and she gave it, but using different words than every time before.

  “Easy’s back.”

  For a moment he showed no reaction. Then he drew a deep breath. “I see. How is he?”

  It was a polite question. He and Easy had never been friends. In school, she, Easy and Guthrie had needed no other friends. They’d been best buddies and so much more. Now she and Guthrie had managed a tentative friendship—more because of Olivia than anything else—and she and Easy were...

  Unfinished business. That was all. She needed an end to their relationship that she could live with—something more final than waking up one morning in a dingy Montana motel to find him gone. Gone, with no note, no farewell, no go to hell. Just gone.

  For six years she’d wondered why—wondered what she could have done to make him stay, whether anything she might have done could have made him stay. Six long, miserable years.

  “Shay?” Reese prompted. “How is he?”

  Offering an unsteady smile, she tried for a lightheartedness she couldn’t imagine feeling. “With Easy, who the hell ever knows?” She didn’t. She knew very few things about him except for an undeniable fact—that she’d loved him desperately. That she’d broken Guthrie’s heart for him. That he’d broken her heart. That sometimes she hated him far more than she’d loved him.

  “Well..” Reese combed his hand over his hair, then put on his Stetson. “If you need him run out of town or anything, give me a call. I’m always happy to accommodate you.”

  Her smile felt more natural this time. That last was true. He’d been most accommodating, right from the start. Of course, he had his own ghosts in the past—someone or maybe something he’d loved and lost. He’d understood. He understood now.

  Remembering his ticket, she rang it up and started to make change. “Keep it,” he said. “And let me know if you need anything.”

  Oh, the things she needed... She couldn’t even begin to list them. But the first and most important was time alone. Leaving the counter, she located Geraldine in the kitchen. The woman was the oldest of Shay’s employees—could have been mother to their mothers, she liked to boast—and could work circles around any one of them. Right now she was giving the cook none-too-well-received pointers on his gravy, but the instant she saw Shay, the gravy was forgotten.

  “What’s going on?” she asked bluntly.

  “Nothing’s going on.” Shay’s cheeks warmed with the lie. “But I’m going home.”

  “Home? In the middle of breakfast?”

  “Everything’s under control. After all, you’re here.”

  Geraldine subjected her to intense scrutiny. “You plannin’ a rendezvous with the sheriff?”

  Warmth turned to heat. “And would it be any of your business if I were?”

  The waitress grimly shook her head. “Woman your age should be settled down.”

  “I am settled.” She hadn’t traveled more than a hundred miles from Heartbreak in six years.

  “With a different man every time you turn around.” Geraldine snorted.

  “I don’t pay you to worry about what I do every time I turn around. I pay you to help run the café. If you can’t stay out of my business, you know, you can be replaced.”

  Geraldine didn’t take offense but smiled broadly instead. “No, I can’t. Some people are irreplaceable.”

  But she wasn’t one of them, Shay thought bitterly as she let herself out the back door. Guthrie, who had wanted to marry her, loved his new wife in ways he’d never even thought of loving her, and Easy, who had sworn he would love her forever, had replaced her easily and often before abandoning her for good in Montana.

  Her house was only a half dozen blocks from the café. It was a tiny place—a dollhouse, her mother called it—with a tiny porch and a tiny yard and a view of Pete Davis’s horses out back. The siding needed replacing, the kitchen updating, the bathroom remodeling, but it was home. There were flower beds out front, soft colors inside and no memories to haunt her.

  She let herself into the living room, walked through to the kitchen, then into the bedroom. Geraldine was right. A woman her age should be settled. If her life had gone according to plan, she and Guthrie would have been married for more than fourteen years. She’d be living with him out at the ranch, working alongside him, passing Sunday mornings in a church pew between him and their children. She would be the mother of teenagers, going to soccer games, setting curfews, worrying about all the temptations that faced kids today.

  That had been her plan, Guthrie‘s—even their mothers’. No one had counted on Easy, least of all her.

  From the depths of the closet, she dug out an old photograph, then sank into the chair tucked into the corner near the window. The picture had been taken on her twentieth birthday, the day Guthrie had proposed. The day she’d realized that something was not quite right—no, entirely too right—between her and Easy.

  He’d driven all night from a month’s worth of rodeos in the Dakotas and Wyoming to make it to her afternoon party around her folks’ pool. He’d been late, and he’d found her alone in the kitchen, refilling the punch bowl. He’d given her a gift—she couldn’t remember what now—and he’d kissed her and—

  She touched her fingertips lightly to her lips. She’d known. That little nothing kiss, and she’d known, damn it, that she’d just accepted a marriage proposal from the wrong man.

  Easy had known, too. He’d kissed her again, and she’d damn near burst into flames. They both had.

  He hadn’t come home so often after that, and on every visit he’d kept his distance, but it had been hard. The times they couldn’t avoid touching, they had practically sizzled. Even when they could avoid it, the connection was still there—so dangerous, so potent.

  When he’d come home for the wedding, they had really connected. The sex had been raw, desperate and incredible, and afterward, when he’d pleaded with her to run away with him, she had gone. She’d had no choice.

  Eight years later he’d still been running, but with a difference—he’d been running away from her, not with her. Finally he’d succeeded. But now he was back again.

  And what in God’s name was she going to do about it?

  With his eyes still closed, Easy shifted, taking stock. Apparently he’d slept, because the sun was now low in the western sky. He had a bad taste in his mouth, a jackhammer pounding in his head, ungodly aches elsewhere, and he smelled like sour beer.

  At least the last was easily explained when he lifted a beer bottle from where it had rolled against his ribs. He’d fallen asleep with an open bottle of beer. What he hadn’t managed to drink now dampened his shirt, the covers and the mattress.

  What had awakened him? It wasn’t that he’d had enough rest. He could have slept another ninety-six hours and still not taken the edge off his weariness.

  Then the sound came again—a knock at the front door. His muscles tensed as he slowly sat up. Who would be visi
ting him this evening? Guthrie? He imagined his old friend might have a few things to say to him, all starting with “You bastard” or some variation thereof. Shay’s mother? According to his own mother, Mary Stephens had had more than a few things to say about him after the wedding had been called off. Maybe she wanted to unload, face to damaged face.

  Shay?

  Not if there was a God in heaven.

  He reached for the cane, but it wasn’t there. Vaguely remembering a clatter, he bent forward to look down and saw it, half under the bed, completely out of his reach. Well, hell.

  From the front of the house came a creak as the screen door was opened, then the scrape of metal against metal.

  The tension knotting his muscles eased slightly. Only one person besides him had a key to the house—Joelle. Though he’d rather not see her, if he had to deal with anyone, better her than the other choices.

  Slow, measured steps tracked her movement through the house. Slow Jo, they’d called her when they were kids. She was quiet, smart and totally unflappable. He’d never seen her excited, angry, giddy or sad. She was the calmest, coolest person he’d ever known.

  The steps stopped at the open bedroom door. Knowing how he looked, how he smelled, how damn pitiful he must be, he didn’t look at her but stared instead at the empty wall across from him.

  “Your mother called and asked me to check on you. She said you promised to call her last night when you got into Heartbreak. She said she knew you wouldn’t.” Joelle came into the room, picked up the cane and offered it to him.

  She’d changed little in the sixteen years since he’d last seen her, he thought as he instinctively slid his right hand behind his back and took the cane with his left. Neither tall nor thin, she’d always been described by her father as sturdy. Her black hair was worn in a braid that fell to her waist, and her dark eyes showed the same patient, calm expression they always had. She wasn’t pretty, not in the way most people defined the word, but there was something appealing about her. She’d never lacked for attention. Everyone liked Jo.