“You live in your folks’ place?” he asked, peering around curiously. Sunlight filtered in through windows thick with grime. Dust motes played in a few feeble rays of sunlight that pierced the interior.
“Yeah.”
“Alone?”
“With my daughter,” she said, closing the stall door. The latch clicked into place and seemed to echo in the stillness, broken only by a frustrated fly buzzing near the window and her own wildly beating heart.
“I didn’t know you were married.”
“I’m not.”
“Oh.” He probably thought she was divorced, and for now, until her equilibrium was restored, she’d let him think what he wanted. He could bloody well leap to whatever conclusions his fertile mind conjured up.
She was used to speculation. Raising a child alone in a small town was always grist for the ever-grinding gossip mill. Over the years people had made a lot of wrong assumptions about her—assumptions Sam never bothered correcting. “Mom moved into town when Dad died, but Caitlyn and I—”
“Caitlyn’s your daughter?”
She nodded tightly, afraid of giving away too much. “We wanted to stay out here. I was raised in the country and I thought she should be, too.”
“What about her father?”
A roar like a wind through the mountains in the middle of a winter storm surged through her brain, creating a headache that pounded behind her eyes. “Caitlyn’s father,” she repeated. “He’s—he’s out of the picture.” Silently calling herself a coward, she grabbed a brush to stroke Joker’s sleek coat.
“Must be tough.”
If you only knew. “We manage,” she said, throwing her back into her work as nervous sweat began to slide down her spine. Tell him, Sam, tell him now! You’ll never have such a golden opportunity again. For God’s sake, he deserves to know that he’s got a child, that he’s Caitlyn’s father!
“I didn’t mean to suggest—”
“Don’t worry about it,” she interrupted, moving to the other side of Joker and sending a cloud of dust from the animal’s rump. She worked feverishly, her mind racing, her mouth as dry as Sagebrush Gulch in the dead of July.
“If you don’t watch out, you’ll rub the spots right off of him.”
She realized then how intent she’d been on her work. Even Joker, usually never distracted from feed, had crooked his long neck to look at her. “Sorry,” she muttered and tossed the brush into a bucket. Kyle was making her nervous, and the subject of Caitlyn’s lack of a father was always touchy. Today, in the hot, dark stables, with the very man who was responsible for impregnating her and leaving her alone, Samantha felt trapped. She let herself through the stall door and tried to ignore the way he sat upon the top rail, as he had ten years before, jeans stretched tight over his knees and butt, heels resting on a lower rail, eyes piercing and filled with a sultry dark promise as he watched her. But that was crazy. Those old emotions were gone, dried-up like Stiller Creek in the middle of a ten-year drought.
“Sam…” He reached forward and touched her arm, his fingers grazing her wrist.
She reacted as if she’d been burned, drawing away and throwing open the door. A shaft of bright summer sunlight pierced the dim interior and a breath of hot, dry air followed along. Hurrying outside, she heard his footsteps behind her, new boots crunching on the gravel of the parking area, but she didn’t turn around, didn’t want to chance looking into his eyes and allowing him to see any hint of what she was feeling, of the bare emotions that surged through her just at the sight of him. Damn it, what was wrong with her? “I—I’ve been coming over here, doing my dad’s old job, acting as foreman ever since the last guy, Red Spencer—he’d been here for seven years or so, I guess, before Dad retired—anyway, Red took over for Dad when Dad couldn’t handle the job, but he left a couple of months ago. Moved to Gold Spur, I think it was, to be close to his son and daughter-in-law. Kate asked me to keep an eye on things and I agreed, but now that you’re back you won’t be needing me—”
“Sam!” This time his fingers found her wrist, clamped tightly and spun her around so fast she could barely catch her breath. “You’re rambling, and near as I remember, that’s not like you.”
“But you don’t know me anymore, do you?” she said, her anger, ten years old and instantly white-hot, taking control of her tongue. “You don’t know a damned thing about me, and that’s because it’s the way you wanted it!”
“For the love of—”
She yanked back her hand. “All the records are in the den.” Making a sweeping gesture toward the house, she kept walking to her truck. “It looks like your tractor might need a new clutch, there’s a buyer from San Antonio interested in most of your cattle, I’ve got a list of people who want Diablo—er, Joker—as a stud. The hay’s in early this year and—”
“And you’re running scared.”
“What?” She whirled and faced him, fury pumping through her bloodstream, hands planted on her hips.
“I said you’re—”
“I heard what you said, I just couldn’t believe it. You,” she said, eyes narrowing in silent, seething anger as she pointed a furious finger at him, “of all people have no right, no right to accuse anyone of running!” Throwing her hands into the air, she looked up at the blue sky with its smattering of veil-thin clouds. “You’re unbelievable, Kyle. Un-be-liev-a-ble!” Turning on a well-worn heel, she stormed to her truck, threw the rig into gear and ripped out of the parking lot, leaving Kyle in his fancy new boots, tight jeans and designer shirt to eat her dust.
“Is somethin’ wrong?” Caitlyn, sitting on the far side of the old pickup, pinned her mother with blue eyes so like her father’s as the truck sped into town.
Tar oozed on the shoulders of the old country road. Hot air blew threw the open windows, catching Caitlyn’s already tangled wheat blond hair.
“Wrong?” Samantha’s heart tightened as she shifted down for a corner. The sun was sitting low on the horizon and waves of heat shimmered from the asphalt, distorting the false fronts of the Western-looking buildings. Clear Springs paid homage to the latter part of the nineteenth century with its architecture.
“Yeah, you’ve been acting funny ever since you picked me up.” Caitlyn wasn’t having any of her mother’s double-talk.
“I suppose I have,” Sam admitted, remembering how Kyle had rattled her cage. She’d been still fuming as she’d retrieved her daughter from a friend’s house.
“Why?”
“I just saw an old…friend today. It took me a little by surprise.”
“So?”
Yeah, right. So? “And I have a headache.” That wasn’t a lie. From the second she’d laid eyes on Kyle Fortune, her head had been pounding.
“Your friend gave you a headache?” Caitlyn shook her head, still not buying her story. “You look mad.”
“Mad?”
“Uh-huh. The same way you looked last year when you found out that Billy McGrath had his birthday party and invited everyone but me and Tommy Wilkins.”
Sam’s blood boiled at the memory of that incident. “Well, that was wrong and Billy’s mother knew it was wrong and… Oh, well, it’s all water under the bridge now.” Samantha reached toward the dashboard and grabbed her sunglasses. At the time she’d wanted to throttle bratty Billy and his snob of a mother, who had decided that two kids out of a class of twenty-one weren’t good enough to attend the birthday swimming party. The two kids who were whispered to be illegitimate.
“So