A Rancher's Pride(50)

Feeling her cheeks flush, she adjusted the air conditioner vent. Finally, she said, “I’d rather hear the full story from you. The true one.”

A long pause, as he drove slowly down Signal Street and along the back lanes already familiar to her, that took them out of town.

She should have known he wouldn’t answer her.

But when he turned, at last, onto the road that led to the ranch, he surprised her.

“How much do you know already?” he asked.

“Well.” She chose her words carefully from Matt’s report. “When you were a teenager, there was an accident, a fire on the Porters’ property. And there were animals lost.”

“Kind of cold, isn’t it?”

She frowned, puzzled.

“Say it like it was, Kayla.”

“You mean…”

“No, you mean, I started a fire in the Porters’ barn, and I killed off half the livestock in it.”

“You forgot the accident part.”

“Who said it was an accident?”

She turned abruptly toward him and almost choked when the seat belt stopped short. Now she knew how poor Pirate had felt with that leash around his neck. She loosened the strap. “Come on, Sam. I know you wouldn’t do something like that on purpose.”



SHE BELIEVED HIM.

The knowledge rocked him, making Sam grip the steering wheel so hard, he thought he’d leave permanent grooves. A mile down the road later, he still couldn’t get over it.

Or figure out how to answer her.

Kayla believed him, but she didn’t understand how much she was asking of him by wanting to know the full story. There were details about that night in the Porters’ barn that no one else had ever learned.

No one could learn them, because he’d made a promise to the only other person who knew what had happened. A teenage promise that had gone a long way toward helping screw up his life.

But Kayla sat there looking at him, waiting for him to answer.

Trusting him, for once, to tell her the truth.

He shifted his grip on the wheel, looked at the road ahead and in his rearview mirror. No one else in sight. They might have been alone, the three of them.

Except for the man he’d never forgotten, who could just as well be riding alongside him now, invisible, for all that Sam couldn’t force him from his mind.

And except for the animals who’d been trapped in the burning building. The memory of them stayed with him, too.

“We’d gone into the barn that night to get out of the cold,” he said slowly.

“You and…?”

“Porter.”

“The man who owns Pirate?”

He nodded.

“He’d turned on a kerosene lamp, low. We could just about see our hands in front of our faces. Enough to do what we wanted to do.” He flexed his fingers, then tightened them on the wheel again. “We had a bottle of whiskey he’d taken from his old man’s stash in the garage. First time we’d ever done that. Felt like a real kick to be sneaking into the barn, hanging out like the ranch hands did.” He paused, then went on. “We both got stupid-drunk.”

He glanced at his mirrors again then looked in his rearview at Becky. She was turning the pages of a picture book.

Kayla sat watching him intently.

He shrugged. “We started goofing around with the hay and next thing we knew, we had started a fire we couldn’t control.”

She sucked in a breath so loud, he could hear it over the hum of the pickup’s tires against the road. “You didn’t do it deliberately.”

“No, but we were under the influence. And it was my fault.”

“Yours? How can you say that? It sounds like you both messed up.”

“Yeah, but I was the one who’d come up with the idea of taking the whiskey.”

She said nothing. She didn’t need to. He knew what she was thinking. So much for trusting him now. So much for asking him for the truth. He’d never lied before the night of that fire. A couple days later, after leaving the courtroom, he’d sworn he’d never do so again. But that one lie of omission in front of the judge had hurt him ever since.

Finally, she spoke. “What happened? With the fire?”

He stared, unblinking, into the distance, trying to get the words from his throat. “Some of the rags the ranch hands used to polish the tack started smoldering, too. We barely had time to blink before we were surrounded by smoke and flames. We…we headed for the animals. Tried to get them out of their stalls. They were scared. Confused. In a panic. So were we.”