How to Knit a Love Song (32 page)

She went on. “The state will be sending you a bill.”

“A bill,” he’d said. “For what? I pay my taxes, like everyone else.”

“We don’t charge if it’s accidental. But if it’s negligence, and you’re in a state resource area, the state will bill for services.”

“I’ve never heard anything so stupid in my whole life. How much is it going to cost me?”

She sighed. “Between five and ten grand, I’d guess. I’m sorry.”

Cade had pushed past her and out into the open air outside the diner, where he could breathe.

Shit.

He’d worked all day, as hard as he could.

He should have gone to the cottage for dinner. He knew he should have. But he’d been too upset.

She had moved out. He hadn’t needed the invitation to dinner she’d left on the kitchen door to know that she was gone. The house echoed and felt empty. Hollow, like when he was a kid and his mother had gone again.

Cade had held Abigail’s invitation in his hands as he went upstairs. He had stared into his closet, and then he’d walked down the hall and stared into the room she’d been sleeping in.

Last night they’d been together.

Now she was too far away, even though the distance was mere steps.

His doubt made her seem even farther away.

He slept a little. A couple hours at the most. Then his alarm went off, the middle-of-the-night, check-the-ewes alarm that would ring almost every night for the next month.

He’d found two of the ewes already, and he’d put them in the barn with their new babies, one single and one pair of lambs. He’d given the babies their vitamin spray that his vet laughed at but Tom swore by, and he’d doused their umbilical cords with iodine.

The freezing air was making his nose and eyes ache. By the end of lambing season, he’d barely feel it, but tonight it hurt.

His first thought when the alarm had gone off had been of her. Then the fire. Then disbelief all over again. Bonnie’s words rang in his head.
Spalling. A liquid was poured…

Impossible. He knew Abigail. She wouldn’t have any reason to set a fire. None at all. She already had everything she wanted. She had her land, her shop, and now her living space.

And she wasn’t crazy.

Or had he been blind this whole time?

What was crazy was this, what he was doing. Out here, in this flock of about a hundred of his sheep—only a fifth of all he owned—he was looking for one that might be giving birth. In the dark. He held a flashlight, cutting its light through the bitter-cold air. Sheep
baa
ed in protest as he moved among them. They didn’t like this, didn’t like things to be outside their routine. Cade was like them in that way.

He stumbled over a gopher hole. Christ, it was cold. Still no sign of the other new mother.

Setting a fire was a mark of a crazy person, and he’d lived with her for a month. He’d know if she was crazy.

Wouldn’t he?

He couldn’t be in love with a psycho who set fire to his property.

In love.

Godammit
.

He really had the best timing.

But then again, so did she. It was sure a strange coincidence, wasn’t it, that she moved out days after the fire was set? And she sure had been quiet while the chief talked to them.

No. There was no way. Not her. He’d dated crazy women in the past, plenty of them. He’d thought for a while he preferred them that way. But Abigail wasn’t crazy.

He hated this doubt.

If she hadn’t set the fire, then who had? He didn’t have enemies. They’d never had problems with arsonists in this valley.

It couldn’t be her.

Cade was about to give up. Maybe the other ewe was going to wait until the morning. He’d done his due diligence looking for her out here in this weather. He’d crawl back into bed.

One more place to look, over there, in the shadow of the concrete trough. Something was on the ground, a light-colored lump. Damn, why hadn’t he checked over there first?

Cade walked to where a newborn lamb lay on the cold ground. He touched it. Stone cold. He put his finger in the lamb’s open mouth. The tongue was hard, dry, and cold. It wasn’t breathing.

He shined his flashlight around. Where was the mother ewe? She might have abandoned this one because she was giving birth to another one. There, on the other side…

A ewe lay in the shadow of the trough. Blood pooled around her body.

“Oh, hell,” said Cade. She must have bled out while giving birth to the lamb that appeared pretty damn dead just feet away.

He left the mother. There was nothing he could do for her now. Focus on the lamb.

He opened his jacket, gasping at the night air. He placed the cold lamb under his clothing, against his skin. He ran out of the pasture and toward the house at a trot.

Once in the house, he filled half the double sink with water. He ran it cooler than tepid, a notch warmer than cold. When the sink was full, he carefully placed the lamb in the water.

No reaction. The lamb didn’t breathe. Cade felt no heartbeat.

Shit, he might not get this one back. Sometimes they were just too far gone, too cold, too far in shock.

He checked—it was a boy. A little ram lamb. They weren’t good for much, just for selling to the kids at Easter or auctioning off, but it was still a lamb.

“Come on, pal,” he said. “You can do it.”

After a minute, he ran a little warm water in the sink, raising the temperature slightly.

A few minutes more, another dose of warm water. Still nothing.

After the fourth warming of the water, he felt it. Just a twitch, and he couldn’t even say where he’d felt it.

Cade put his finger again into the lamb’s mouth. This time it was warm. The tongue was soft again and Cade felt a tiny suckling motion against his finger.

He whooped, and the lamb jerked in his hands.

“Yes! I knew you could do it!”

He took his time, raising the temperature of the water gently until it felt like it was just right. The lamb kicked and jerked and threw its ungainly head around.

“I know, it’s not much fun. It’ll get better.”

Cade wrapped the lamb in towels and carried it into the parlor, where he lit the fire that, thankfully, he’d already laid. In minutes it was roaring. Cade set the lamb down on another dry stack of towels.

“What you need is the hair dryer. Stay there.” The lamb wouldn’t move much now. It was exhausted from its being-almost-dead ordeal. He raced up the stairs to the bathroom where he kept the hair dryer. It was stupid, really. He never used it for anything but drying lambs. He should keep it in the parlor, but for some reason he always returned it to the bathroom when he was done.

He plugged it in downstairs. He pointed it at the lamb, who was kicking but not walking. There was a snap and a frizzling sound and the hair dryer went dead.

Shit. The fire would work, but it was slow. The faster he got the little guy warm, the better.

Cade didn’t have another dryer. But she might.

Chapter Thirty-three

Men are very good for some things, including finding needles and stitch markers lost in the couch
.

—
E.C.

W
hen Abigail heard Cade calling her name, she had no idea where she was. This wasn’t the right bed. She didn’t understand the configuration of the windows. She hardly recognized the curtains when her eyes focused.

In the top room of her cottage. In her new bed.

Why was Cade yelling at her from outside?

The room swung as Abigail stood. She was still a little drunk from the wine, she realized. She pulled the curtain back. Cade was outside, standing below her window.

She tugged up on the window. It was heavy and squeaked as she raised it. She didn’t trust that it wouldn’t slam shut, so she held it up with one hand as she leaned out in her pajamas. The cold air flooded into her room.

“Do you have a hair dryer?” Cade yelled up at her.

“A hair dryer? What do you need it for?”

“Yes or no?”

It all came flooding back to her. The dinner she’d cooked. How he hadn’t come or even called. It would probably hurt again later, like it had before all the wine, but right now Abigail felt cocooned.

“I have one, yes.”

He sounded impatient. “Can I borrow it?”

“Oh, all right.” She let the window bang down.

She threw a jacket over her pajamas and teetered downstairs to the bathroom. Outside, she handed him her dryer.

“What’s it for?”

“Nothing.” He walked away from her.

Abigail followed. “No thank you? Tell me. Emergency blow job?” She giggled. It was even funnier when she said it out loud, and it had sounded funny enough when she thought it in her head. Yep, that was the wine.

“Something like that.”

Abigail tagged along behind him. The cold air felt good against her flushed cheeks. She gazed up at the stars, which shone clear and bright, but it put her off balance, and she stumbled in the dark.

“I’m okay! I’m okay,” she said.

Cade didn’t look back.

“Are you really not going to tell me? I
demand
to know.”

“I’m not going to tell you,” he said over his shoulder.

“You have to.”

“If I do, you’ll want to come in.”

“What’s so wrong with that?”

“I’m not in the mood,” he said.

“Whatever. Tell me.”

“I’m drying a lamb that I brought back from the dead.”

Abigail stopped in her tracks. “That is so
awesome
.” As Cade opened the door, she pushed past him. “This I have to see.”

She heard Cade sigh as he gave up. “Parlor.”

Sure enough, a tiny white lamb lay on a pile of blue towels.

“Oh, my God! How much does he weigh?”

“Well, I didn’t have my scale out there in the dark, but I’d guess about eight pounds. Not much more.”

“She’s the size of a small cat! Look at her!”

“Him.”

“Him! He’s so cute! Can I dry him?”

“I guess so.”

Cade plugged the dryer in and handed it to Abigail. “Careful not to get it too close to the wool. You don’t want to burn him.”

“This is the coolest thing
ever
.” She turned the device on and tested it with the back of her hand. Not too hot.

The lamb wriggled when she pointed the warm air, as if he wanted more of it. He squeaked and stretched his legs.

For a long time, she just moved the hair dryer over the lamb. Abigail and Cade didn’t speak. The fire crackled, and the low hum of the dryer was soothing. The room smelled of smoke and wet wool. Abigail could taste the wine still on her tongue. Cade stood by the window and looked into the darkness.

Abigail broke the silence.

“Can he walk yet?”

“He could, but it doesn’t look like he wants to.” Cade’s voice was as cold as the air outside.

“Why is he all wet, anyway?”

“I put him in warm water. I found his mother dead. She bled out. He was stiff, not breathing, cold.”

“Will another mother take him? Nurse him?”

“Usually one will. I’ll put this one in with another that was born tonight. He’ll probably suck, if that ewe lets him. If he doesn’t, I’ll have yet another chore on my hands.”

“How did you do it? Bring him back, I mean.”

“Warm water in the sink.”

“How did you know to do that?”

“Uncle Joshua always had good luck with it. Eliza would stand behind him and say, “You’re not going to save that one, buddy.’ He’d do it anyway, running the water, taking his time. When the lamb came back to life, Eliza would say he’d performed another miracle.”

Abigail looked up at him. “You performed another miracle!”

Cade looked down at the lamb and shrugged.

As Abigail blew the lamb dry, she watched its curls go soft and curly. It was the newest fiber she’d ever seen in her whole life.

She smiled at Cade. “I wish I’d seen Eliza drying them.”

He didn’t smile back.

Abigail wished she weren’t half tipsy, half hungover, but it was enough that she was sitting here in front of the fire. She pulled the towel and the lamb along with it into her lap.

“Did you get my note?” she asked, not looking at him. She was glad she was past the stage where she might have slurred her words.

“Yeah.”

She waited, moving the warm air under the lamb’s soft pink belly.

But Cade didn’t say anything else; he just stood by the window and watched her.

“I was disappointed when you didn’t come to dinner.”

“I was disappointed when my shack burned down.”

Abigail was surprised. It almost sounded like he was mad at her about it. “Did you find out what caused it?”

“Flammable liquid. Poured and set.” He paused. “There may be a ten-thousand-dollar bill coming my way from the state. Is there anything you…want to tell me?”

“What?” Abigail’s stomach knotted.

“It was arson. They can’t prove it, but it obviously was.”

“Seriously? Who would have done that? To you?”

Cade just folded his arms and looked at her.

It settled on top of her like a weight, the realization that he doubted her. That he thought she might have had something to do with the fire.

“But I was there putting it out! I could have been hurt, you said that yourself.”

“Jesus, move the dryer back, don’t burn him. Yeah, like that. You were the first one there, that’s true.”

Didn’t he know her better than that? Abigail’s mind raced, thinking of ways she could defend herself. She had no alibi—she’d been alone on the ranch when it started.

Or at least she’d thought she’d been alone.

Samuel.

A stab of terror jolted through her. If he was really here, in the area, if he was after her…

She’d fight. She’d fight harder than last time.

Cade still stared at her. Who did he think he was, anyway? Why the hell did she feel like she had to defend herself to him? She hadn’t done anything wrong.

She turned off the hair dryer. The lamb was almost perfectly dry now.