The Hero of Hope Springs Read online

  “So what is this about? Your mom or Pansy?”

  “Both. I mean, one fed off the other.”

  He shook his head and huffed. “Women get so weird about weddings. Is it just because you’re feeling competitive because she’s younger than you and she’s getting married?”

  Right then he knew that it was the wrong thing to say. Sammy was a beacon of light. Sammy was all sunny smiles and glitter. Until she wasn’t. And very few people knew what it looked like to watch those summer-blue eyes shift and sharpen into shards of ice. But he did. He knew it well.

  And that was just what they did then. Sharpen until he was sure he was about to get stabbed clean through.

  “Is that what you think? That I’m in some kind of marriage competition with your little sister? I don’t need a man to realize my life plans. And that includes you. I don’t need your input. I don’t need your advice. I’m not a child, Ryder, and this is the problem. I haven’t given you a reason to think that I’m not. But you... I’m two years younger than you. I understand that you were put in a very weird position where you were basically raising people your age. But I was never one of them.”

  “No,” he said, agreeing to that easily. Because he had never felt like he was raising Sammy. He had felt like the barbarian standing at the gate. Keeping the monsters at bay. Ready to die for her. Ready to kill for her. His sunshine.

  Currently, his iceberg.

  “Since when have I ever given the impression that I was desperate to have what other people consider a normal life? I’m not.”

  “Sammy, you know that I didn’t mean that.”

  “It’s not about your sister. It’s about my whole day. This whole town. My whole life. I really believed someday my mom and I could be fixed. But we can’t be. I’m not sitting around waiting for my family to heal. I took a good long look at it today and saw how broken it was. I... I can be a good mom, Ryder. I can. I can give a kid what my mom didn’t give to me.”

  She said it with such deep, emotional determination that he felt a sliver of guilt lodge itself in his chest. “Of course you’d be a good mom, Sammy.” The words scraped his throat raw. “And I didn’t mean to offend you. I’m just trying to understand you.”

  “I didn’t ask for your understanding.”

  “But you did want to talk to me. You wanted to tell me. Did you think that you were going to tell me you want to have a baby and you weren’t going to get any kind of advice back? What in our past history has given you the impression that I was not going to weigh in?”

  And that was when he realized. That was what she wanted. She wanted a fight. She had wanted something to get all righteous and het up about. A dragon to slay, because Sammy knew how to be an underdog. And he played right into that. But she was better at games, played either with herself or other people, at building cases and setting stages. He just sort of...knew how to endure. Two very different skill sets.

  “I tell you what,” he said. “Let’s go home and sleep tonight off. If you still want to talk about it tomorrow, we’ll talk about it.”

  He could sense that his measured tone was only tightening the screws on her irritation. But he didn’t much care. Because he knew Sammy well enough to know that even if this bothered her, she wasn’t going to outright show it. Because that would mean letting on that she knew that he was on to her, and she wasn’t going to do that.

  “Fine,” she said. “We can talk tomorrow. But nothing is going to change.”

  “All right,” he said.

  He could feel her bristling with indignation, because she didn’t like to be dismissed, but dismissing her was the best thing for both of them right now.

  They turned and started to walk back toward the saloon, but Sammy paused, treating him to one last look that still held a glint of the ice she had treated him to moments ago.

  “You know, instead of thinking about it I could bring one of those guys inside home.”

  He stopped, everything in him resisting it.

  He didn’t mind watching Sammy flirt. There was an ease to it that he had always admired.

  But he had never watched her take a man home, and he wasn’t about to start doing it now.

  “You do that,” he said, “and I will follow you and I will drag him right back out of your bed.”

  Her lips twitched. “You can’t save me from everything, Ryder. Least of all myself.”

  “But there’s no point to me if I don’t try.”

  And in that moment they were at a stalemate, because she knew it was true. Because she knew as well as he did that she had told him all this to give him a chance to weigh in. That she was goading him and taunting him to see what he would do. And that if he did nothing she would be damned disappointed.

  It was Sammy all up. It was part of how they were. Her father had hurt her with his fists. Her mother had hurt her by not protecting her.

  Ryder in turn protected her. Kept her safe. Treated her like she was glass sometimes.

  And there were times Sammy pushed for that, especially when she felt wounded.

  This was coming from her fight with her mom. It was coming from her feeling injured and wanting a shield.

  He could indulge that. It wouldn’t hurt him.

  “I suppose that’s true,” she said, clearly pleased she’d gotten a reaction from it.

  “No suppose about it,” he said, holding the saloon door open for her. She scrunched her face at him.

  “Sometimes it’s a damn menace that you know me so well.”

  “Well, you can still surprise me. Let that keep you warm tonight.”

  Because God knew if another man kept her warm tonight he wouldn’t be able to sleep.

  Mostly because he was worried she would go ahead and follow through with the pregnancy thing.

  And not for any other reason.

  As they took their seat back at the family table, joining everyone, who thought nothing of the fact that the two of them had slipped off for a few minutes of alone time, he cemented that fact in himself.

  This was just a weird, crazy night. And that was all.

  Nothing was going to change.

  Nothing major. Sammy liked a shock, but that was it.

  In the end, she would listen to reason. She always did, if only because he was there to act as the reason.

  She might say that he didn’t need to protect her, but he knew the truth.

  And that was what he would do.

  CHAPTER THREE

  SAMMY AND RYDER had a long-standing gentleman’s bacon agreement that she was seriously considering ignoring today. Still, she had woken up before dawn, which was when she had to wake up if she wanted to do breakfast with Ryder, and her body had automatically sensed that it was Saturday morning, and that there should be a bacon situation.

  On Saturday mornings she cooked it for him. On Sundays, he did it for her. Unspoken, unwritten, but very real nonetheless.

  He didn’t deserve bacon. Not at all.

  Not after the way he had spoken to her last night. But...the problem was... The problem was it was hard to stay mad.

  Well, maybe it was just hard to resist bacon. But she had slept on it. And actually, as she rattled around in her camper and pulled out a skirt, bangles, a thin T-shirt and a pair of sandals for the day, she felt even more resolute. She began to make a mental list. A mental list of all the things she had going for her.

  She’d felt an indefinable sense of being incomplete for about six months now. Just the sense that she was on the edge of some new evolution or metamorphosis and she didn’t know what shape it would take.

  Then her mom had said all that to her yesterday. Issued a challenge, essentially, and Sammy was a stubborn creature all the way to her soul. So the challenge had hooked itself in there and hung right on.

  Then there was Pansy.

  P
ansy demonstrating what it was to grow. To move on. To make a life.

  It was enough to bring everything into a crystal-clear vision in her head.

  And Ryder didn’t trust her.

  Fine. She would prove to him she wasn’t being spontaneous, crazy Sammy.

  Well. Not just spontaneous, crazy Sammy.

  He was worried about the camper, but she was going to ignore that for now. Because to her mind the camper was all that she needed. It would fit a bassinet nicely, and she intended to be a single mother, so there was no reason to dress it all up any differently.

  As for health insurance, he did present a good point, and she was going to figure that out. It was on her list. Then she was going to have to figure out the whole father-of-the-baby situation. And that went on her mental list, too. So there, that was some planning. He wouldn’t be able to fault her for that.

  She was being responsible.

  Just like he had demanded.

  With a bounce in her step and intent in her heart she made the trek across the field, to the edge of the gravel up to the front porch of the farmhouse. She loved this place. She had spent the first fourteen years of her life in her parents’ house, before moving into the camper. And for as long as she could remember it had felt like being in the den of some frightening and foreign creature.

  It hadn’t felt like home. It hadn’t felt like a refuge. It had felt mean and like the whole house was made of the most brittle glass. And one breath could shatter it all.

  She had learned to walk carefully. But she had never quite been able to master not breathing. And so the shattering had been inevitable.

  But that wasn’t the main point right now. What mattered now was breakfast and forcing Ryder to admit that she wasn’t as silly as he seemed to think. He was such an obnoxious, self-righteous...

  When she opened the door and walked into the kitchen, her line of thinking was stopped completely by the sight of him standing in front of the coffeepot. He was wearing a pair of low-slung jeans, and that was all.

  His broad, muscular back was just...there.

  As if the universe wanted her to take a good, hard look at the shoulders she had been resting on for the past seventeen years. He was like he had always been—like something unreal to her. Like a rock carving come to life. Strength and angles and an otherworldly perfection that had always made her think of him as some kind of...

  Something more than a man. Infallible in some ways.

  When she had become his friend she had begun to feel a deep sense of pride over his looks. Because he was her friend. And in some ways, she felt like he belonged to her. She felt that same sense of swelling pride now as he turned to face her, his body a triumph of hours of hard labor rather than hours in the gym. Lean and toned and well-defined. He was bigger than the men she typically gravitated toward. Taller, broader. More muscles.

  “I didn’t expect to see you here,” he said, lifting his coffee cup to his mouth.

  “Where else would I be? It’s bacon day.”

  “You were mad at me,” he pointed out.

  “Not really.” Except she was. “We stuck a pin in it.” As if that was enough to staunch the flow of her rage. “Remember. You set it aside and decided to deal with it later. You told me to sleep on it, in fact.”

  “That I did.”

  “So I did.”

  “And do you have clarity?”

  “I am the queen of clarity,” she responded, making her way to the fridge and pawing around after the bacon. She pulled out a carton of eggs, as well.

  “All right, reigning queen of clarity. Do you have thoughts?”

  “I haven’t had coffee. I have few thoughts.”

  “That’s a lie. We both know there have been thoughts buzzing around in your blond head since the moment you rolled out of bed this morning.”

  She squinted. He knew her much better than she would like sometimes.

  “Maybe.”

  “Say what needs saying. Do it quick, because I gotta get out of here and get working so I can be back in time to watch the game.”

  Ryder was married to football. Any football. College. Professional. Any team. Didn’t matter. She sometimes wondered how much of his enjoyment of the game was wistful, given he’d given up a football scholarship to care for his siblings. But he never acted like it was.

  “Speak your mind,” he pressed.

  “I don’t need an invitation to do that.”

  Except there was a time when she did.

  The slow unfolding of herself after she had escaped home had been a whole process.

  And that had hurt. For a while she...

  She had quiet rebellions from the time she was far too young. Mostly with boys at school. And she had confused being touched with being cared for and had found a way to make some of the ache of loneliness go away.

  Then she had moved to Hope Springs and she had found a kind of safety. And as she felt safer and safer, she’d been like a butterfly who’d come out of a chrysalis. Her wings had been wrinkled and wet, and it had taken time for her to be able to spread them completely. But gradually she had begun to do it. And for a little bit of time afterward she had been...manic.

  Giddy with freedom and unsure of what to do with that half the time. Some of it had been self-destructive, though she hadn’t meant for it to be.

  Time had mellowed her. Though Ryder might disagree with that. Especially at the moment.

  “I made a list of everything I need to get in order before I go having a baby,” she said, taking the bacon out of the fridge and moving over to the stove.

  “Okay,” he said, his tone grim.

  Obviously, this was not a subject he wanted to be in the middle of. Too bad for him.

  “Health insurance is the one I’m not sure what to do with at the moment.” She got a pan out and turned the burner on, letting the bacon settle in the pan.

  “And you think that you have to leave to take care of the baby?”

  “I don’t know,” she said. “It all feels like it goes hand in hand with growing up.”

  “You are grown-up,” he said. “You can trust me on that one.”

  “I’m not independent.”

  “Take it from me,” he said. “Independence is overrated. As somebody who had my security pulled out from under me at a very young age, I can tell you there is no shame in banding together. Or did you forget that? Did you forget that it’s how we got through all of this?”

  “I didn’t forget,” she said. “It’s just that I want...change.”

  “Change is terrible,” he said, getting out his own pan and putting it on the burner next to hers. He cracked a couple of eggs into it and grabbed the spatula.

  “Not always,” she said. “A certain amount of change is a normal part of life.” She picked up the tongs out of a canister next to the stove and flipped the bacon. “And I’ve been stagnant for too long.”

  “What part of this thing is nonnegotiable for you? Leaving or the baby?”

  She had no real idea what leaving would give her apart from change, in the broadest sense. There wasn’t a particular place she wanted to go. It was more that she was reacting to fear. The fear of being her mother. The baby was something else. A desire for love. For a sense of family. Completion.

  “The baby, I guess.”

  “Think about it,” he said. “If you stay here when you have the baby then you’ll have us to help out.”

  “I don’t want to do that to you,” she said. “You already raised kids.”

  “I did,” he said. “And to be clear I am not offering to raise your kid. But, Iris will be here. Iris loves babies.”

  “I don’t know that your sister would appreciate you deciding that she can babysit.”

  “I don’t care,” he said. “She’ll live.”

  “Very sens
itive of you.”

  “I never said I was sensitive.” They both turned to face their respective frying pans, and their shoulders brushed together.

  “I just... The whole point of this is... I don’t want to be like her. She’s...she’s just still here and she hasn’t changed and it made me worried maybe I haven’t done enough to move on from everything we went through, either.”

  “If it’s just to change things, then you can do that in a much less permanent way than having a baby, you know? Get a tattoo, Sammy.”

  “Tattoos are permanent, Ryder. Or did you not know that was the point of them?”

  “All right, but you don’t have to feed a tattoo. Or change its diaper.”

  “It’s more than that,” she said. “You have all this family that loves you. I don’t. I never did. I’m an only child from a couple of miserable people and you know that. You’re the only one who really knows. I want to fill my life with something...sweeter. Better. I want to make a family that I love that loves me back.”

  “We’re your family,” he said, his voice rough.

  “I know,” she said, shaking the pan slightly and letting the bacon pop and sizzle.

  “But it’s not enough for you?”

  She didn’t know how to answer that. Ryder and Hope Springs Ranch had been enough for her, more than enough for so many years. They had been the fulfillment of dreams that she hadn’t even been brave enough to have when she was a little girl. Dreams that had been nothing but whispers and echoes inside her as she had listened to the violence that tore through her house on a nightly basis.

  But it wasn’t about enough. It was about shifting and changing and growing.

  It was about...this restless empty ache inside her that never seemed quite filled or solved no matter how much she wished that it were.

  It was about the desire to prove she could be better than her mother. That her anger wasn’t misplaced. That it wasn’t actually so hard to simply love your own child.

  “Why a baby?” he asked.

  It was what they’d been talking about this whole time. But the way he asked now, with his voice husky and serious, his shoulders set rigid even as he flipped the eggs in the pan. She couldn’t deny him an answer. And that meant looking deeper inside herself than she would like. But she owed him that much. And for Ryder she would suffer a little bit.