The Hero of Hope Springs Read online

  “I just mean from the perspective that...”

  “Oh, that my younger sister is marrying some superhot cowboy guy more age appropriate to me but I’m here essentially a dried-out spinster that might die alone?”

  “Well,” Sammy said. “Not alone. I mean, Ryder will probably live here forever eating the food that you and I make him.”

  “The food that I make him,” she said. “You’re not going to stay here forever.”

  “Actually... I’m going to be here for a while. Okay. I’m going to tell you something, and I need you to not make it weird.”

  “Oh,” Iris said, giving Sammy a sidelong glance.

  “It’s just that Ryder already did. And I don’t need additional...commentary.”

  “Oh, dear,” Iris said, opening up the oven and flicking a couple meatballs to the side, checking their doneness. She closed the oven and turned to face Sammy. “What exactly is going on?”

  “I’ve decided I’m going to have a baby.”

  Iris blinked. Multiple times. “You’re going to...”

  “Have a baby.” She cleared her throat. “Ryder is going to help me find the father.”

  “Okay,” Iris said. “I think I officially need to not know about this.”

  That was when Logan walked in, tall and broad-shouldered and better looking than any man had a right to be. Like her, Logan was not blood related to the rest of the family. But he was part of them all the same.

  “Know about what?”

  “I’m planning on having a baby.”

  “Seriously?” Ryder came into the kitchen sometime after. “You’re just going to tell everybody.”

  “That’s kind of my thing,” Sammy said. “I’m not really known for my discretion.”

  Ryder looked like he might end up suffering a fatal surge of blood pressure. A moment later Rose walked in. “Sammy is going to have a baby,” Logan said.

  Rose’s eyes went round. “What?”

  “I’m not pregnant,” Sammy said. “I’m just planning to be.”

  “This place is a damn circus,” Ryder growled. “A damn circus.”

  “I don’t care,” Rose said. “As long as there’s garlic bread and no clowns.”

  “There are clowns,” Ryder muttered, going to the fridge and digging around for a beer.

  The rest of the ingredients came together shortly after that, and the crew helped set the table. A green salad, spaghetti and meatballs, and of course garlic bread.

  Sammy wasn’t afraid of awkward silences. And often, her grandiose statements seemed to force them. But she kind of enjoyed that in its way. Maybe it wasn’t fair. To someone like Ryder who had such a strong sense of the natural order of things. But she had been nothing more than a cog in a machine in her parents’ house. Her father had been the gears, so easily capable of grinding her into pieces.

  She’d had no control there. None at all. So there was something gratifying about being able to take control of situations by being shocking. She didn’t really care what that said about her. It made life interesting.

  “Who’s the lucky guy?” Logan asked.

  “I haven’t decided yet,” Sammy said cheerfully. “Are you offering?”

  “No,” Logan said, giving her a wink.

  She didn’t know what she would have done if he’d have taken her up on it. A couple of months ago Iris and Rose had been teasing her about the possibility that Logan might have a crush on her.

  The idea had unsettled her greatly.

  She didn’t want anything to come between her and this family. This family that had become her own.

  Plus, she just didn’t think of him that way. He was family.

  Of course, as genetic material went, he would be a decent enough specimen.

  But he wasn’t offering.

  “Can we not talk about this at dinner?” Ryder said.

  “Why not?” Rose asked. “It’s the most interesting thing that we’ve had to discuss in... I don’t know how long. You’re just going to find a guy to get you pregnant?”

  “Don’t get any ideas,” Ryder said.

  Rose made a face. “Oh, please,” she said. “Do I look like I’m someone on the cusp of doing something like that?” Rose was dusty from a day out on the ranch, wearing jeans and an old, ratty T-shirt. She had on a weathered baseball cap, which covered stringy, braided brown hair. “I can barely take care of myself. Anyway, I babysit Logan out there all day. I don’t need a kid.”

  The look that Logan gave Rose was inscrutable. And Sammy realized she was happy for it to remain inscrutable. She sort of didn’t want to know what was behind it. There were just things she was better off not being in the middle of.

  “You better not,” Ryder said.

  “Oh, but you’re going to support Sammy?”

  “Yes,” he said. “I am.”

  “You’re a hypocrite,” Rose said. Mostly just to say it, Sammy knew, because as Rose said...she did not want to have a baby.

  “I’m not a hypocrite,” Ryder said. “It’s just that you’re my sister.” His eyes met hers, and Sammy felt intensity. Heat. Radiating from across the table. Was he that angry at her? So angry that it poured off him in waves? “Sammy isn’t.”

  Something about those last two words took the heat inside her and twisted it. And that sparked something that sizzled in her stomach. She cleared her throat. “Well, I hate to dominate the conversation with my potential pregnancy. There really isn’t much to say right now. Except that when something is happening, I’ll let you know.”

  They spent the rest of the meal talking about other things, but Sammy felt...regretful. Which she wasn’t used to. More than that, she felt weirdly protective of Ryder. Somehow the whole conversation had been turned around to have something to do with him, and that didn’t seem fair. Not after the way that he was supporting her. Well, grudgingly, but still.

  She didn’t often regret the things that came out of her mouth. Whatever she accomplished with them she was generally happy to accept the consequences. Most people kept everything bottled up inside them. Not her.

  But she did regret it when it bothered someone she cared about. In this case, Ryder.

  She was going to suggest that they talk after dinner, but judging by the look that he gave her over the table he already knew that. And he would demand it even if she hadn’t.

  Just as she put her last bite of pasta into her mouth, he pushed himself away from the table. “Outside,” he said.

  He was often a commanding bastard, but this was a little bit ridiculous even for him. He wore his irritation like a second skin. And when he rolled his shoulders back, the muscles there shifting, she gave thanks that she knew down to her bones exactly what manner of man Ryder Daniels was. Because when her father was at this level of intensity then a fist to the face couldn’t be too far behind.

  Ryder would never.

  She didn’t doubt that, even for a moment.

  She had a feeling he might want to punch a wall right now, though.

  He ushered her outdoors, onto the porch, and she turned to face him. “I’m sorry,” she said.

  “For what?” He crossed his arms over his broad chest, and she took a moment to admire the strength there.

  Men like him normally made her uncomfortable, because of her past experiences. Men with intensity. Men with muscles.

  The men that she dated tended to have slimmer builds, rather narrow of shoulder. Quick with a smile, slow to anger.

  Ryder was none of those things. Broad and big and brooding as anything. But it was different. She wasn’t dating Ryder. He was her... Hers.

  “You’re mad at me,” she said. “Even if I don’t fully understand why.”

  “Because you telling everyone makes it a hell of a lot more official,” he said.

  She touched his arm. “I
t is official. For me anyway.”

  “Why are you sorry, then?”

  “Because you’re upset. I’m not sorry I told them. I’m sorry that it bothered you because I care about you, idiot.”

  He sighed heavily. “Why do you always do that? Why do you... Why do you have to take everything public?”

  She shrugged. “I don’t see the point in keeping things to myself. It’s not like it’s a secret.”

  “You don’t have a plan. You don’t have anything in place. And... Honest to God, Sammy, I think you’re a little bit too selfish to have a baby.”

  His words felt like a sword straight through her heart. They deflated her completely. “You... What?”

  “You want to have a baby because you want something to love you. And that is the saddest damn thing that I’ve ever heard. And I’ve heard some sad things.”

  “I... I...”

  He ran over her stammered half attempt at a protest. “But it’s also about you. It’s about you and what you want and how you feel, and not at all about the kid. Trust me when I say...you know kids don’t belong to you. They’re their own people. And if you’re not there, they have to make their way without you. They don’t exist for you.”

  “You don’t think I know that?” She could feel her pulse beating in her temples, behind her eyes. Could feel blood rushing into her cheeks. She didn’t get mad very often. She had seen the drastic effects that anger could have on a life. On people. And she had never wanted to be like that. Sure, she was a petite woman and not a man with big, bruising fists, but you didn’t need to hit in order to cause pain. So she did her best to keep her temper locked down. But not now. Right now she was going to let it fly. “My father treated me like his own personal punching bag. And my mother treated me like a human shield. That isn’t...”

  “I know you know it,” Ryder said. “But are you thinking clearly right now? Because you want this thing, and I know you, Sammy. You’re impulsive. And you like to shock people. So do I think that some of this is you wanting to make a little bit of noise? Yeah. And do I even think that maybe it’s because Pansy has something and you don’t? Yes.”

  “I as much as said that. But you’re twisting it to make it sound like I’m doing something to take the focus off her, and I’m not. It’s just that what she did... Where she’s at in her life, it makes me conscious of what I’m not doing. Do people want babies for selfless reasons? Or do they want babies because they want them. I mean, eventually I’ll know the kid, and I’ll know exactly what I want for them. But until then... I guess it starts with me wanting them, right?”

  “Yeah, but because you want to give, not because you want to take.”

  “That you think I... That I would just take from my own child is about the lowest thing that anyone could ever have said to me. And I thought you knew me better than that.”

  It was what her mother thought. That she couldn’t do this. That she would be a bad mom.

  She had never expected for Ryder to say something like that to her.

  “I thought I knew you, too, and then you looked up at me and said you wanted to have a baby. And everything in my life turned a little bit sideways. I guess I don’t know you all that well, Sammy.”

  “This is...” She stomped down the porch steps. And then she stomped right back up. “This is bullshit,” she said. “I deserve more credit than this. I have been here... I have been here all this time. And you have taken care of me. And I appreciate that. But I’ve taken care of you. Who cooked you dinner tonight? I did. And yes, Ryder, when I came over here it was because I wanted people to care about me. Because I looked in your yard and I saw happiness and chaos and freedom that I didn’t have in mine. It wasn’t about greener grass. It was about finding a life. So yes, when I came over here it was for me. But the love that I feel for all of you... What followed was my desire to give to you. And that’s what has made this family for me. It’s what’s made this real. I know that’s what’s going to happen with the baby. I know it is. So don’t lecture me.” She took a deep, jagged breath. “Don’t think so little of me.”

  “It’s not thinking little of you,” he said. “But it’s uncharted territory. And I know you. I know you, Sammy, and you’re great at a lot of things. You are capable of things that I can’t even fathom. But this is what I know. Responsibility. What it means to have to set everything aside to care for other people. You were escaping something when you came here, Sammy, and that doesn’t mean you don’t love us. I was just handed a whole hell of a lot of responsibility. I didn’t choose it. I didn’t have something worse that I was leaving behind. I had something great.”

  “And you think that I have something great? What is that? My camper? Our friendship? Those are great things. But I’m not going to leave any of it behind. And... I am choosing this. I’m choosing this just like I chose being with this family. I’m choosing to expand my family. To make myself one. That’s why I want... That’s why I want to actually know the guy that’s going to be the father of the baby. Because I want...connections. I want roots.” Saying that, she realized for the first time that it was true. “In my experience roots have often been poison. But I want to grow down deep into my own soil and make something that belongs to me. Isn’t that okay?”

  “Just don’t... Don’t go building up fantasies that you’re going to somehow find yourself a husband and everything this way.”

  It was like he had reached into her chest and grabbed hold of her heart. Twisted it. Everything in her recoiled from the idea, but there was fear that immediately jumped into the back of her mind. Fear that he might be right. That there was another layer to the fantasy that she wasn’t allowing herself to acknowledge.

  “I don’t want that,” she said. “I want... I want to raise my child here. I mean, not here the whole time necessarily. But this place... I’m glad that you asked me to stay. Because I can’t think of anything better than giving my child this whole family. Maybe you think I’m selfish. Maybe I am. But I do want to share you with my baby. I want to give my child the happiest parts of my own life.”

  His dark gaze caught hers and held, and she found it difficult to breathe. She didn’t know why. Maybe it was the way that he saw her. He didn’t just look at her, he stared. Down deep. And she was afraid that he saw things there that not even she knew existed.

  “If that’s what you want, then I’m going to help you.”

  “You don’t approve,” she said.

  “I know.”

  “Why are you helping me?”

  “Because I’m your friend,” he said. “It doesn’t matter if I disapprove. I’m going to help you get what you want.”

  There was something heavy and unspoken at the end of that sentence, but she couldn’t quite figure it out.

  “Thank you,” she said.

  “Now, do you want to come back inside and have dessert?”

  “Of course I do,” she said.

  And she felt a little bit like things were better. Like they might be close to being fixed. Because they had fractured slightly around that table, and it had hurt her.

  He would support her, and whatever she did. She could have a new thing, and the old thing all at once.

  And she found that enormously cheering.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  THE NEXT DAY Ryder was in a foul mood. He had taken that foul mood out on Sammy last night, and even though she had been the cause of it, he felt guilty about it even now. It made him even angrier. Which was why he was chopping wood with enough force to split a concrete pylon.

  “Settle down there,” Logan said, wandering up slowly, his laconic movements only serving to amp up Ryder’s irritation. His friend was so damned laid-back. The kind of guy that people called for a good time, and an easy time.

  Something Ryder would never be.

  Except that he was a cowboy and about the furthest thing from a hippi
e as possible, Logan probably had more in common with Sammy than Ryder had with either of them.

  “We don’t all have the luxury of wandering around life waiting for things to be handed to us. Some of us have to put in a little elbow grease.”

  “Oh, yeah,” Logan said. “I’m from a real charmed background. In fact, I think it might be the same one you’re from.”

  “Still,” Ryder growled.

  “Yeah. I mean, when my mom died she did leave me a ranch, though, so...”

  “Can I help you?”

  “I just wanted to talk to you about what happened last night.”

  “Why did I have a feeling that you would?”

  “Does she know you’re in love with her?”

  Ryder stopped; the muscles in his shoulders suddenly went tense. And he noticed he was grinding his teeth. He stopped. “What?”

  “Sammy. Does she know that you’re in love with her?”

  “I am not in love with her,” Ryder said.

  “Sure.”

  His friend looked at him, far too deep. Far too sharp. It made him remember that Logan was the only one who’d ever seen him break.

  Six months after his parents’ death he’d lost it. Gotten drunk out in the barn and broken down. With Logan there as the only witness. A drunk one, but a witness all the same.

  “I’m not supposed to be here,” he’d said. “I was supposed to be a thousand miles from here. In college. Playing football. I wasn’t supposed to be everyone’s dad.”

  The responsibility, all that he’d given up, it had hit him like a ton of bricks then. His grief had finally cleared enough for him to see right where he was, and it had been...well it had been hell.

  Logan had gotten him through that moment. Logan had seen the weakest part of him.

  It wasn’t long after that Sammy had shown up. And if not for her...

  Well he’d have been sure to break down again.

  That didn’t mean Logan was right about this, though.

  “I’m not. I don’t want anything to do with that. Marriage and kids and all of that. It’s not for me.”