Erin's Way (2 page)

It all struck her as so amazingly funny. She sat on a rock, puffed on her joint, and giggled. Welcome back, Erin! Nothing like arriving in style in Mountain Meadow.
Daddy, I’m home!
A few more feet, and she’d have made a splash right into the bottom of a shallow creek. Wouldn’t everyone be so proud of her?

Some things never changed.

As she toked the joint in her hand, she looked around blearily. Where was she? She couldn’t be far from home. But God, it had been so long since she’d been here. Last fall didn’t count. She hadn’t even spent the night. So, yeah, where was she? A couple of blinks and she momentarily cleared her vision enough to see the dark silhouette of a cabin. As she looked at the hills and trees surrounding her, memories came back. Her cheeks flushed with humiliation. She was on Sam’s land. Why did every mortifying moment of her life involve Sam? He was the only man who had ever made her breath catch and her heart pound, and he was the only man who had never shown any sign of wanting her. Life was so unfair.

* * * *

With his long, sock-clad feet propped over the end of the couch, Sam had nearly dozed off when his phone rang. It had been a crazy day what with deputies on vacation or sick. Sighing impatiently, he snatched the cordless phone from its resting place on the table next to him. “Barnes.”

“Sam? It’s Stoner. Carter called me. There are cows out on the highway. He’s not sure whose they are. He’s already out there trying to round them up. I’d be happy to help, but that whole electronic tether thing…”

“Dang it, Stoner,” Sam snarled. “I’ll call the department and tell them to ignore the alarm and why. The neighbor kid who helps me is sick with pneumonia, but I’ll be out there as soon as I get my boots on to see what’s up.” Sam slammed the phone down with a bang.

At that moment, he would gladly have strangled the judge who sentenced former Senator Stoner Richardson to two years house arrest for pleading guilty to conspiracy charges. It was nothing but a major pain in the butt, when it wasn’t a downright joke. In the last six months, Stoner had probably spent as much time away from home as confined to it. Now he was going off the property again. If someone didn’t suspend his sentence soon, Sam might go beg the judge himself, so he wouldn’t have to play watchdog for the wandering senator. He would have to talk to Evan about it. The guy had served half his sentence already and had been a model prisoner.

Sam’s already taciturn mood grew even more thunderous as he yanked on his coveralls, slipped his big white-stockinged feet back into thick-soled work boots, and pulled a cowboy hat on. Sweet Mary. He’d be glad when spring got here. Better yet, summer so he could work in either a T-shirt or shirtless.

Most of all, he wished he wasn’t going out in the dark to round up cows in the freezing cold. Just in case, he threw a roll of barbwire, some temporary posts, and his wire cutters into the back of the truck before he bumped down the drive.

Please let them be Stoner’s Angus and not his Hereford crosses. It would please him to no end to have something to hang over the senator, but as he reached the road, he saw broad white faces reflecting back at him in the moonlight. It was his baldies. Stoner would never let him hear the end of it.

Crap!

Even in the dark, the tall, angular form of the former senator leaning against his pickup was plain to see. He spoke as soon as Sam got within earshot. “Carter’s herded most of them through the gate, but we haven’t located the break in the fence yet. You know, Sam, if you’d hire another hand or two…”

Sam spun on his neighbor, fists clenched, but only glared at him. “Not all of us drip money, Senator.”

Stoner’s two-way radio crackled. “I’ve found the problem, Mr. Richardson. An accident. Fence is busted pretty good here in the corner by the creek. Car’s hanging with one wheel over the bank.”

Sam instantly converted from farmer to sheriff. “Any injuries you can see? Do I need to radio for an ambulance?”

“Don’t think so. There’s a woman here. She seems okay, I guess. She’s laughing.”

“Laughing?” Stoner’s mouth twisted.

Sam growled with anger. Probably some teenager out joyriding. Just what he needed, something else to drag him back into town tonight when all he wanted to do was crash. “Hop in, Senator. I’ll give you a ride. You and Carter mind helping me put up a temporary fence?”

“Not at all.”

“I know we haven’t exactly been on the best of terms….”

Stoner cut Sam off. “That was years ago, Sam. Besides, looking back, I don’t think you were the one at fault. Erin was out of control.”

Sam nodded, deciding it was better not to respond. Erin always seemed to be at the middle of any discord. He might not be at fault for his actions, but his thoughts about the senator’s daughter had been anything but pure. It was twelve years ago, so maybe it was time to let things lie. After all, Erin was gone and it didn’t look like she would be back. Last fall hardly counted. He rubbed the back of his neck and frowned at the thought.

As they drove down the road, Sam used the radio in his truck to call in the accident and said he would handle it until they could get someone out in the morning. As he and Stoner climbed out of the truck in the darkness, Sam saw how much of his fence was smashed.

“Holy freaking cow! Could the stupid idiot have done any more damage?”

“Damn,” Stoner added. “It almost looks like the driver did it on purpose.”

“Or fell asleep at the wheel,” Sam grumbled. Fools. Nobody needed to be out on a night like this one, especially just joyriding. Icy patches from the last storm were still refreezing at night, making driving risky.

In the pasture, on the other side of the car, they heard Carter’s deep rumbles and a higher pitched voice.

“I’m fine, man. Hey, jerk, get your hands off me. Ooh! Was that
cow
shit
I stepped in? Oh, God. Oh
gross
. That is so freaking disgusting. Man, I hate this place! I
always
hated this place.”

Stoner looked at Sam, who saw the same shock of recognition reflected in the senator’s features before both of them slipped and slid down the embankment in a sudden hurry, running across the pasture to the car. Sam skidded to a stop, all of his thoughts jumbling together, but what lingered in his mind was,
not like this, Erin, not like this.

Erin looked up as she heard them and grinned. The grin started Sam’s heart pounding until he saw her bloodshot eyes in the glow of the flashlight. “Hi, Daddy! Hi, Sammy! I had a little accident.” Then she leaned over and vomited right at a very surprised Carter’s feet. Sam doubted it was the puke that floored Carter. Hearing Erin call Stoner Daddy probably accounted for the look on the foreman’s face.

As Stoner slowed, so did Sam. They approached cautiously, as if they had encountered a wounded grizzly and weren’t quite sure how it would react. But then confronting Erin had always been that way. He never knew exactly which Erin would show up. Would she snap his head off or twine herself around his heart? Sam had been struggling with that since he’d first met her when she was nine. No matter how much he’d tried to forget her over the years, it hadn’t happened. His feelings had just changed.

“Erin?” Stoner ventured quietly. “What are you doing here?”

Sam sniffed the air, inhaling an all too familiar odor. Any nostalgia he might have been experiencing evaporated. “Darn it, Erin. Have you been smoking pot right here on my land?”

She straightened, her eyes wary as she looked between the two men. “Don’t worry, Daddy…Sam. I’m fine, just a little head injury. So nice of you to ask, and nice to see things haven’t changed. Oh wait, I guess they have, because the last time you two were this close together, Daddy, you were trying to choke Sam at the same time you were calling me… Let’s see. What was it? Oh yes, a ‘white trash tramp and no daughter of yours.’ Fourteen was such a good year.”

She glanced at Carter’s gaping jaw and smiled coolly. “Another fond memory of childhood in the Richardson household.” Erin tilted her head back and laughed. “Hi, Daddy. I’m home!”

“Damn it, Erin,” Stoner muttered as anger and concern warred with each other in his expression, but when he reached for her, she stumbled backward, shivered, and glared at him. Her whole body trembled, and Sam wasn’t sure if it was from cold, drugs, or just plain nerves.

Depression weighed on Sam. He rubbed the back of his neck where the muscles tightened with tension. Just once, he wished his encounters with Erin and Stoner could be different, but they all seemed to begin and end the same way with all three of them tense and on the defensive.

Erin scrubbed her hands up and down her arms as if she were trying to jumpstart the circulation there. “I can’t find my coat. I thought it was on the backseat,” she blurted angrily, “and I’m cold.”

Sam saw she had on only a sweater. He pushed past her and searched the car, emerging in a moment with a polar fleece-lined ski jacket. He helped her on with it and zipped it. Then he saw the blood trickling down the side of her head. His breath hitched. Fear tightened his gut. He stepped in close enough to touch her head, nerves tightening when she looked up at him for just a moment with her guard down.

“Erin,” he murmured, but the door had already closed. Her guard was up and her chin jutting. “You’re hurt.” Without waiting, he swung her into his arms and carried her back across the pasture. Somehow, he managed to get her up the bank without landing either of them in the mud. After ripping open the back door of the still running truck, he set her in the warm interior. Erin’s face was pale and her eyes big and dark in the dim light.

“Stay here!” he ordered. His face felt tense, his brows drawn tightly together. “We have to fix the fence, then I’ll run you and Stoner back to his truck.”

Erin stared at him. As if the life had suddenly drained from her, she closed her eyes. She leaned her head back against the seat, grimacing in pain. “Okay,” she muttered tonelessly.

“Erin!” Sam grasped her shoulder, thinking of last fall when she’d bolted as soon as he’d left her alone at Richardson Homestead after giving her a ride home. “You will stay, right?”

For a second he saw something hot and intense in her gaze, but she looked away and the moment was gone. “Yes. I have to. I don’t have anywhere else to go.”

He ignored that remark for now. In his experience, Erin appeared and disappeared wherever and whenever she felt like, as long as it was nowhere near him. He tamped down the ache in his chest that thought brought with it. The more drama she could create with her abrupt arrivals and departures, the better. Sam slammed the door and yanked the spool of wire and the temporary posts out of the pickup bed. He turned as Carter and Stoner reached the road.

“Let’s get this fence up,” he growled. “We’ll run a couple of strands and use battens between the posts that are still up. That should hold until morning when it will have to come down anyway in order to get the car out.” He looked at Stoner, “I guess you had no idea she was coming?”

Stoner grunted an affirmation. “When have we ever had any idea what Erin planned? Hell, she came out of the womb feet first just to be different.”

Carter, who had only been with Richardson Homestead for the last four years asked, “That young woman is your daughter, sir? I thought you had only Evan and Tabby.”

Stoner sighed, then explained, “Erin is Evan’s younger sister. Tabby is their younger half sister. I’d better call Catherine and prepare her. No. On second thought, I don’t want to break this to her over the phone.”

Sam turned away with a frown and began anchoring the first strand of barbwire. In his mind, he saw again the brave little nine-year-old he’d met so long ago and the way she’d stood up to her father’s chewing out even with the broken arm that had to have hurt like hell. Almost eighteen years later and nothing seemed to have changed. To Stoner, Erin was still a problem to be handled and hidden.

Sam’s mouth tightened. He wanted to punch Stoner, or at the very least knock some sense into the man. Erin wasn’t a problem. She was Stoner’s daughter. Sam hammered the wire staple with enough force to anchor it in one swing. He was just as mad at himself as he was at Stoner. He had treated her the same way the last time she’d shown up. For a few minutes last fall, as he took her back to her parents’ house, he’d gotten a glimpse through the attitude and seen the loneliness she so successfully hid. Something inside him had responded immediately, just as he’d always responded to her, but there’d been no chance to explore it before she had once again fled. Now she was back, and he had to wonder why.

Sam hammered the last fence staple in place, then hefted his wire and fence tools. “Thanks, gentlemen. That should hold everything until morning.”

“No problem,” Stoner’s foreman replied. “’Night.”

Carter climbed back into his truck, started the engine, and turned around, saluting Stoner and Sam as he drove back down the road to the caretaker’s house where he and his young wife lived. Sam and Stoner walked side-by-side back to the truck without saying a word. Sam tossed the fence tools and the wire into the bed before opening the back door to check on Erin.

She was still there. Sam refused to examine why it mattered so much to him. His heart beat in a heavier rhythm as he took stock of her. She was curled into a ball on the back seat, her shapely little jean clad derriere pointed right at him. He pulled his glove off and checked her pulse. Steadier than his, that was for sure. He frowned when she didn’t stir and looked across the seat to Stoner.

“She’s always been a heavy sleeper,” he said.

Stoner climbed in the passenger side in back and sat next to his daughter. It surprised Sam, but then Stoner was a changed man, so perhaps things would be different for Erin this time. Sam hoped so. The thought made his gut unknot a hitch.

“Erin, honey!” Stoner said. “Sit up. Let’s see that head.”

She struggled to open her eyes, blinking owlishly. Her brow furrowed as her glance went from side to side as though not sure where she was. When she finally focused on him, he saw no recognition in their depths. Sam wasn’t sure if it was from the pot, the injury, or sheer exhaustion. She looked like hell.