“We can’t—” She started talking to her father, but he was paying attention only to the man standing outside their door.
Allie had thought she’d never lay eyes on Clay again. It wasn’t fair that he walked around every day a whole man while Mark was lying in a convalescent bed staring at the ceiling and struggling to form a coherent sentence.
And now Clay was here—on their porch—and looking better than he had any right to be.
Her world had just turned upside down, and she didn’t know what to do about it.
Clay looked through the screen into the shadows of the kitchen, and his heart sank. For a moment he had thought it was Allie inside the room. Now he saw it was only Mr. Nelson reaching toward the door wearing denim overalls hooked over his white long johns. The unshaven man held a magazine in one hand and fumbled with the catch to open the screen with the other. A lock of his gray hair fell across his brow as he bent his head in concentration. There were lines in the man’s face that Clay did not remember being there and dark circles under his eyes.
“Here, let me help you,” Clay said as he jiggled the handle on the door from the outside. He had figured out how to make that latch work years ago. A person had to press it just right and it moved smooth as butter.
“You came,” the older man said as Clay pushed the door open.
Clay nodded as he stepped into the warmth of the kitchen. It was just as well it was only the two of them. Maybe then the man would tell him why he’d sent for him. When Clay had been convicted of armed robbery, Mr. Nelson told him never to come back to Dry Creek. The old man had meant it that day. People didn’t just change their minds for no reason. Maybe the church had put pressure on Mr. Nelson to bring Clay back.
“I can’t take your job under false premises—” Clay started, suspecting the rancher would be happy to end this charade, too. He likely hadn’t wanted to make the offer in the first place. “So if you plan—”
“Hush,” the older man whispered. Then he turned and gave a worried glance at something behind the door. “We can talk later.” The man’s voice returned to normal. “You’ll want breakfast first. Right?”
Before Clay could answer, he heard a feminine gasp.
“Allie?” Clay whispered as he turned to the side. The main part of the kitchen was filled with shadows, but he’d know the sound of her voice anywhere.
In the darkness, he saw her. She stood off to the side by the refrigerator with a beat-up metal spatula braced in her arms like it was a sword and she was a warrior queen ready to defend her kingdom. She used to love to pretend at games like that. Garden rakes became horses. Leaves made a tiara. She’d told him once that she had wanted to be an actress when she was little. Of course, that was before she fell in love with horses. Then all she wanted was to work on this ranch for the rest of her life.
Clay wished he had a pencil in hand so he could sketch her. A thin glow of morning light was coming through the window, and it outlined her in gold. Her posture showed her outrage and her resolve. She wasn’t looking at him, though. Instead, her eyes were fastened on her father.
“I’m not cooking for him,” she announced as she jabbed the long-handled spatula in Clay’s general direction. It was a dismissive gesture. Then she crossed her arms, letting the metal implement stick out.
Well, Clay thought, trying to hide his smile, at least someone in Dry Creek believed in telling the truth as she saw it. He should be upset, but he couldn’t take his gaze off Allie. She’d always fascinated him. Gradually, however, as he studied her, he realized the young teen he’d known was all grown up. The girlish lines of her face were gone, and she had the sleekness of a sophisticated young woman even in the faded apron she wore tied around her denim jeans. Her auburn hair was thick and as unruly as he remembered, although she’d tried to pull it into some order and knot it at the back of her neck. The pink in her cheeks was no doubt due to the cold that had come in from the opened door, but it made her look impassioned.
“I don’t need to eat.” Clay spoke mildly, and then he swallowed. This new Allie made him feel self-conscious. He wished he had taken time to get a haircut before he left the prison. “I do have something to say, however—”
“It’ll do no good to say you are sorry,” Allie interrupted as she stepped closer and stood in the light of the open door. She gave him a withering look. “Words won’t make one bit of difference to Mark. And you should close the door.”
“Sorry,” Clay said as he reached behind him and did so. “But I wasn’t going to apologize.”
No one answered, and the tension in the room jumped higher. Clay figured a new haircut wouldn’t have made him look much better.
“Now, Allie,” Mr. Nelson finally said. “Clay’s a guest in this house. And, of course, he’s going to eat. Your mother wouldn’t send anyone away hungry. You know that.”
Allie turned to Clay, and he felt the air leave his lungs. She’d changed again. The sprinkling of freckles across her nose was the same, but her green eyes blazed. They showed the same fury that had consumed her at the trial. He had hoped the years would have softened her toward him.
“I’ll make you some toast and you can be on your way,” she finally said.
“I have no quarrel with you,” he answered quietly. He missed the girl who had been his friend. “Never did.”
“Nobody here is quarreling,” Mr. Nelson said firmly as he frowned at Allie. “We know how to be civil.”
Clay snuck another peak at Allie. The fire was gone from her eyes, but he did not like the bleakness that replaced it.
“I just want to explain,” Clay said then. There was so much he wanted to say to Allie, and this might be his only chance to say anything. But he had to be wise.
“You okay these days?” he asked.
She didn’t even blink.
He figured that all he could speak of was that night. “I should have convinced Mark to go back to the ranch earlier that night. But the robbery—it wasn’t my doing. That bottle of tequila wasn’t mine. I didn’t know Mark had it with him. I was driving. It was dark inside the cab of the pickup. I thought he was still drinking his bottle of beer. We each had one. And I was pumping fuel into the pickup when he took the rifle off the rack behind us and went into the gas station. I didn’t even see him at first. I had no idea what he planned.”
“Are you saying Mark was the one at fault?” The fire in her eyes came back. Her voice was clipped as she faced Clay squarely. “That you didn’t know anything about it?”
“I’m not saying he was at fault—” Clay stopped, unsure how to proceed. He didn’t need an apology for the way anyone had treated him. He didn’t want her to think that. He wanted her to believe him because she trusted him to tell the truth. Her opinion of him mattered, and he’d fight for it.
“It’s cowardly to blame Mark when he can’t even defend himself,” she said, her voice low and intense. “I know Mark, and I know he wouldn’t plan any robbery. It had to be you. I thought all those years in prison would have taught you to tell the truth if nothing else.”
Clay studied Allie’s face. She was barely holding on to her tears. He knew how that felt.
“I already knew how to tell the truth,” he said softly. “I had barely stepped inside the place when the rifle went off. Mark and the station clerk were already struggling with each other when I saw them—I told everyone that at the trial. That’s why all they could charge me with was