Playing With Fire (Tangled in Texas, #2)(90)

I jerked away from him and tears filled my eyes. “Don’t touch me, you…you cheating bastard. I trusted you!”

He sighed heavily and lowered his voice. “Anna, it’s not true. I wasn’t with Mandy tonight. I swear.”

“Oh, really? Well, that’s not what the two of you just told the sheriff,” I sneered back at him.

“That was just her way of saving my ass. She was keeping me from going down to the station and getting my ass arrested.”

“And you went along with it? Yeah, right.”

“Darlin’, look at me.” When I wouldn’t allow my eyes to meet his, he raised his voice. “Damn it, Anna, I can’t sit in a goddamn cell at the county jail and leave you unprotected. The guy who did this is still out there somewhere. So I took a chance that you’d be reasonable and logical enough to allow me to explain myself before you thought the worst of me.”

“Explain what? Why you just humiliated me in front of the sheriff by letting him believe a girl like me couldn’t satisfy a man with your reputation?”

He cringed and ran a hand over his face. “I didn’t mean to humiliate you. But that’s always what it’s going to come back to, isn’t it? My reputation. Well, you know what? That road of trust drives both ways, honey. It sure the hell didn’t take me much convincing on my part to get you to believe I wasn’t faithful to you, but like you said…with my reputation and all.” The sarcasm oozed from his voice.

“Don’t you dare throw my words back in my face. It’s not my fault you have a reputation as a playboy. What did you expect me to think?”

“I expect you to trust me. You should have at least given me the benefit of—” His cell phone buzzed on the nearby counter, so he lifted it and glanced at the screen. “I have to make a call. Can we argue about this when I get back?”

I nodded silently, feeling the awkwardness between us when he shifted his eyes away from me and headed toward the exit without so much as a good-bye. He swung the door open just as Dan filled the doorway, wearing a medical boot on his injured foot and lifting his hand to knock. When his knuckles only swept air, Cowboy chuckled and moved aside, allowing him entry.

Dan wasn’t the least bit amused as he tapped his cane back and forth on the floor and stepped inside. “Very funny, *.”

Cowboy looked back at me and grinned, long enough for me to feel the tension dissipate between us, then he disappeared out the door. I hoped that was his way of saying all was forgiven, but I wasn’t entirely sure it was. But I couldn’t worry about it right now.

“Hi, Dan. How are you?” I asked loudly, letting him follow the sound of my voice.

He found the chair next to me and sat. “Stop yelling. I’m blind, not deaf.”

I coughed a little, which helped stifle my giggle. “How are you doing? You okay?”

“Fractured my ankle. Doc says I have to wear this f*cking boot for a few weeks.” He gave me one of his big rotten-toothed grins. “Since they released me, I came to see how you fared with our death-defying leap out the window.”

“Actually, I didn’t jump from the hayloft. Apparently, there was an old ladder on the outside of the barn. That’s how I got out.”

The smile Dan wore melted. “What the f*ck is wrong with you, girl?”

“I, uh…beg your pardon?”

He shook his head in disbelief. “You let a blind man leap out a f*cking two-story window while you climbed safely down a ladder?”

I tried not to smirk, afraid that he would hear it in my tone. “No, no, you got it all wrong. The smoke overwhelmed me before I could make it out. That’s when I sort of stumbled upon the ladder. Had I known it was there, I never would have let you jump.”

I sat quietly as Dan recounted his harrowing “brush with death,” as he called it. I actually felt bad for the guy when he got to the part where he had to force himself to jump from the hayloft. Leaping out of a burning building would be frightening for anyone, but especially someone blind who couldn’t see how high up they were or what they might possibly land on. Thankfully, he landed feet-first in an unruly pile of brush—hence the “brush with death” part—which cushioned his fall. Otherwise, his injuries could’ve been more severe.

Dan finally got to the part where my ex-convict father found him and moved him away from the burning building. He said he told the man there was a woman still inside and the man went silent, like he’d disappeared. Guess that was when my father ran to the barn to locate me.

But why? After everything he took from me and after my testimony had put him in prison, why did he—

“Can I borrow your pisser?” Dan asked.

“Of course.”

He sat there quietly for a moment. “You gonna tell me where it is or do you want me to guess?”

“Oh, I’m sorry. The bathroom is directly behind your chair about five feet away.”

Dan rose and tapped his aluminum cane back and forth on the tile until he found the bathroom. He disappeared from sight just as a light knock sounded on the room door. I didn’t even have a chance to say “come in” before the large door pushed open and Mandy came into view.

She kept her eyes lowered as she approached my bedside. “I just wanted to apologize for my behavior,” she said, shaking her head furiously. “I didn’t mean to say anything. But I couldn’t stand by and let Cowboy get blamed for doing something we all know he didn’t do.”