Love Inspired December 2014 - Box Set 2 of 2: Her Holiday Family\Sugar Plum Season\Her Cowboy Hero\Small-Town Fireman (45 page)

“Have you forgiven her? For not wanting to let you work the ranch?” Keira took a side trip to another topic, trying to find her way through this conversation.

Tanner's heavy sigh said more than his words ever could. “I guess I had to come to the point that it wasn't her I had to forgive. It was my father. He was the one who made up the will. He was the one who cut me out.”

“At one time you talked about hiring a lawyer. Did you ever go through with that?” Keira had left before she could find out the outcome of that situation.

“I did hire someone and he told me I had a good case, but then David died and I dropped it.” Tanner shifted his stance, his eyes holding hers. “Besides, I had no reason to go after it anymore.”

Keira guessed she had been that reason.

“Alice is a complex person,” Tanner continued. “I can't begin to understand her, but right now she's the only relative I have left, other than a couple of aunts and uncles, who I know even less than I know Alice. So I'm actually kind of glad she's staying here at the ranch right now. Taking care of your mom. It gives me a chance to spend more time with her.”

“And I'm thankful she's taking care of my mom, don't get me wrong,” Keira admitted. “She's capable and helpful. Though it's been hard to have her around 24/7.”

“Why is that?”

Keira felt as if she had to drag the answer from deep inside her. But she knew he wasn't going to leave it alone. “I guess... I know she's your stepmother but I've always thought she could be nicer to you. I'm sorry, but it's hard to listen to her going on about David like he's everything and you're nothing. David always will be her favorite.”

“He's her natural child. I was the kid she had to take into her life.”

“She knew that going into the marriage. And she's known you since you were a little boy. I always hated the way she favored David over you again and again.” Her words came out harder than she had intended. “And the whole deal with your dad willing the ranch completely to her? I mean, how did that happen? How did she manage to have such a hold on him that he completely bypassed you?”

“Maybe he thought she would be fair. Maybe he wanted to make sure that she was well taken care of.”

“And we all know how that turned out. She made it abundantly clear David would be getting the ranch. Hardly fair.” She stopped herself there, remembering Tanner's pain this afternoon when they had talked about his reasons for taking on all the extra work he did after his father died. All so that he could afford, in his mind, to set them up in a style to which he assumed she was accustomed because he couldn't tell her that his original plan of living on the ranch had fallen through.

Once again regret curled through her. If she had known earlier about the will. If he had told her right away...

She looked into his face, his eyes holding hers, she wondered if she could tell him the rest.

“Anyway, that's why I don't like her. She's so obviously favoring David, making him out to be such a fun, loving person. And we both know he wasn't.”

Tanner frowned at her comment. “What do you mean?”

Keira closed her eyes a moment, the chill from the shack slowly seeping into her bones. She had started this, she had to finish it.

“I'm sure you remember that summer we broke up? When you were gone and David was injured?”

“How could I forget? Worst summer of my life.”

The pain in his voice made her, once again, bitterly regret their fights. How she had pushed him to stay home more without knowing why he was working so hard. Would she have broken up with him had she known all his reasons?

They would never know.

She hesitated a moment, then plunged ahead. “It was a lousy summer for me, too. I...regretted breaking up with you.”

She caught a flash of frustration on his features, knowing that he was probably thinking back to his texts and emails asking her to get back together.

She pushed on. “Anyhow, David was injured, and I was lonely and David was antsy and we spent a lot of time together. We even went out a couple of times.”

Tanner's sudden frown made her wish she hadn't said anything, but he deserved to know this much.

“
Out
as in coffee like we used to do all together?”

“No. Out as in a date. We went to a few movies. And some parties.” Her voice broke and she wondered if she could actually say the words she needed to.

“Was he the reason you broke up with me?” Tanner's eyes narrowed, his voice colder than the storm outside.

“No. Not at all.” She pressed her hands together and forced herself to carry on. “This was after we broke up. I realized I made—made a mistake. I know I shouldn't have broken up with you after your father died. I know that now, that you were grieving, but we were fighting all the time. Just like your parents. I didn't want that for us.”

She stopped there, knowing she had no right to expect understanding, but they hadn't had a chance to talk this all through.

“But I knew that it would be hard to get back together with you...” She let the sentence drift off, feeling Tanner's anger coming off him in waves.

“So only a couple of weeks after we break up, you're dating my brother?”

Keira pressed her lips together; his eyes glittered like ice chips in his pinched features.

She forced herself to hold his gaze and not back down. “We had broken up.”

“So you could go out with David? Who would probably be taking over the ranch?”

She sucked in her breath at the suppressed anger in his voice. “You think I went out with him because you were a less appealing prospect?”

“I'm sorry, but that's how it looks from my side.”

“Well, you're wrong. I don't know how I can convince you otherwise. And there was no way I broke up with you to date David. That just...just happened. It was just a...a temporary stupidity on my part. It meant nothing. Absolutely nothing.”

Don't raise your voice. Keep control of your emotions.

Tanner looked up at her, the anger now replaced by a sadness that bothered her even more. “You said yourself you didn't like the way my mother favored David. Don't you think I knew that, too? And now I find out that you dated my brother?”

Keira wrapped her arms around her midsection, hugging herself from the chill that came not only from the outside but also from deep in her soul.

“I'm sorry,” she said. “Not one of my better decisions. I realized...realized he wasn't my type.”

“Is that why you left Saddlebank?”

She shivered in the chill of the shack, nodding. “I was ashamed of myself and knew I had made a dumb mistake. Even though we weren't a couple anymore, I didn't think you would appreciate us being together.”

“I don't like it now. I can't imagine how I would have felt then.” His admission released some of the tension that had been gripping her up till now. “I know I had—have,” he corrected, “a bad temper. I guess I can't blame you for not telling me back then.”

She relaxed. “I'm sorry. So sorry. Like I said, I wasn't proud of myself. It was one of my dumber decisions, along with breaking up with you. But after...after David, I needed to get away from Saddlebank for a while. I felt like there was nothing here for me. I wanted a new start in a new place.”

Tanner gave her a careful smile. “And that's why you never came to David's funeral?”

Keira knew this was a sticking point for Tanner. “I had other things going in my life at the time,” she said quietly. “David and I didn't part on the best of terms. And that's why I didn't return your texts or your phone calls. I felt stupid for going out with David and I knew you'd be upset.”

He held her gaze, his eyes piercing into her soul.

“I would have been,” he admitted. “So, that's why I never heard from you?”

She nodded, pulling in a heavy breath. “I'm sorry,” she ventured. “I should have let you know.”

“No. I get it.” He smiled at her, which she returned.

Then he pushed himself away from the wall, tugged his gloves out of his pocket and pulled them on. “Let's see if we can get this generator going.”

She was thankful for his quiet acceptance.

He turned his attention back to the generator. Then gave the starting cord a pull. Nothing. Then again. Nothing. Finally, on the third pull it roared to life, drowning out anything else they might have to say to each other. The regular lights inside the shack blazed to life. Everything seemed to be working all right.

Tanner stood back a moment, waiting to make sure it was still going, then nodded toward the door. Time to go back to the house. Before she stepped out the door she looked back at him, trying to get a read on his mood.

He was smiling again.

And for the first time in a long while a small ray of hope winked to life.

She knew they would probably never be a couple again. But if they could find a way to be friends, that could be enough.

Couldn't it?

Chapter Seven

“I
think I'd like the stirrups pushed back some more,” Tanner said, handing Keira the stirrup leathers that she needed to reattach. “If you're putting new ones on anyhow, may as well put them where they work best for me. Just adjust that back bind and the quarter bind for length.”

As she took the leathers from him, he held on to them a moment longer to get her attention.

She looked up at him, a question in her eyes.

“I'm glad you told me about David,” he said quietly, feeling the need to bring everything out into the open in the quiet and privacy of the shop. “That explains a lot for me.”

That wasn't entirely true. It still seemed odd to him that her dating David was what sent her away from Saddlebank and kept her from calling him back, but she obviously thought there was no reason to stay.

So why had she come back at all? And after David's funeral?

He pushed that question aside. That was in the past. He wanted to move on. Take advantage of the bit of ground he had gained last night with her confession.

Her smile eased some of the tension that had hummed between them when he first came here. “I'm glad. I didn't like it that we...we weren't getting along. This is nice.”

Nice
wasn't a word he liked to use when it came to him and Keira, but for now
nice
was better than what had come before.
Nice
was a step down a road he hadn't seen for a long while.

But first he had to get the NFR behind him. Bury the guilt that haunted him since David's death.

He walked back to the table, clearing off the scraps of leather that lay there. Remnants of the stirrup leathers they had measured and cut out a few moments ago. He walked over to the garbage can beside the desk and dropped them in while she reinforced the straps with lines of sewing.

Then he saw her Bible lying open on the desk. Curious what she was reading, he picked it up. He skimmed over the passages, trying to find what it was that had given her nourishment. He saw a passage underlined in Isaiah 43, verse 18.

“Forget the former things; do not dwell on the past.”
See, I am doing a new thing!
“Now it springs up; do you not perceive it?”

He read the words again, wondering what she'd found in them that made her underline them. Then, as he was about to lay the book back, a piece of pink paper, worn and tattered, fluttered out of the back of her Bible. He glanced over at Keira, feeling as if he had invaded her privacy, but she was bent over the machine, a frown of concentration puckering her forehead, and hadn't seen what had happened. So he picked up the paper.

And just before he was about to slip it back into the Bible his heart folded in on itself. He could barely make out the faint outline of Keira's name on the front of the paper. Written in pencil.

By him.

He slipped the paper back into the Bible, his heart now thundering in his chest. He remembered writing that note. He'd wanted to give Keira a valentine but had been too embarrassed to go into Saddlebank and pick out a mushy card. He figured pink paper would be good enough for a valentine note. He remembered telling her in the note that one day he wanted her to be more than his valentine. He wanted her to be his wife.

Why did she still have it?

Same reason you still have that jackknife?

“Can you hold on to this while I sew these leathers on?” Keira asked, angling her chin toward the saddle she was manhandling onto a table beside her sewing machine. “I can do it by myself but since you're here you may as well make yourself useful.”

Her sardonic tone made him smile. This was the Keira he had fallen in love with. The one he had written the note to.

“Your wish is my command,” he said, thankful to have something to do while he sorted out his thoughts.

“Since when?” she challenged with a faint snort that was offset by her grin.

He held her gaze, a smile tugging at his lips. “You had more control over me than you realize.”

“Past tense?”

She didn't miss a thing.

“The past was tense, but I have hopes for the future.”

“Winning the NFR will make your future rosier?” she asked, raising her voice slightly above the thunk-thunk of the industrial sewing machine working its way through the many layers of worn leather.

“It will help.”

Keira finished off the seam and cut the waxed thread, leaving long tails top and bottom for her to tie off later. She turned the saddle around and Tanner handed her the other leathers.

“So tell me again why it's so important to win this NFR for David?” she asked. Her tone was casual but he saw a tension around her mouth and eyes.

In light of what she had told him last night, he wasn't sure what to tell her.

He pulled up a stool to get closer to her, hoping she would understand.

“You know how David died, didn't you?”

“I only heard it was an accident with a truck.”

Tanner threaded his fingers together, the old guilt still so quick to haunt him. “I was supposed to drive him back to the hotel that night.” He stopped a moment, trying to put the situation in perspective but still struggling to find an emotional distance. So quickly those agonizing “what-ifs” tormented him and pulled him back to that horrible night when he got the news. “But I didn't and he died. I carry the burden of that. It was my fault. And I feel like the only way I can get rid of that is to finish what David had started.”

“How do you think his death was your fault?”

Tanner paused, going back, yet again, to that night he wished he could relive. Redo.

“We had been at a rodeo after-party,” he said, sinking back into a past where he spent far too much time. “David had just had a big win and was excited. I got tangled up in the saddle in my last competition. I got hurt and wanted to go back to the hotel and sleep. Things had been tense between us that day. In spite of his win, David had been acting strange. Distant. Like he was ticked at me for something.” Tanner paused, sighing as his thoughts slipped back to that tragic night, forever etched in his memory. “Fights seem to be a common theme between me and the people I care about,” he said. “Anyway, David got all snarly and when I asked him what was wrong, he told me that he found out about the lawyer I hired to contest my dad's will. I don't know how he knew. I had just been feeling out my options. Alice had made it pretty clear David was getting the ranch if something happened to her. I felt marginalized. Pushed aside. I needed to know my rights.”

“Must have been hard for David to know that if you got anything from the settlement, David would lose something,” she said quietly. “He didn't like losing. Ever.”

“You knew David as well as I did.”

“But the ranch was your father's. You should have inherited half of it. David should not have been promised it all.”

He easily heard the bitter note in her voice and, for a moment, wondered if something else had happened between her and David. He didn't want to think that his brother, who not only stood to inherit his father's ranch, had also staked some claim on Keira's heart.

He pushed the treacherous thoughts aside and continued.

“David and I fought and he said he was staying behind to party instead of coming to the hotel with me. He wanted to take some girl out and asked for my truck. I said no. Told him he'd been drinking. He got mad, one thing led to another and then he yelled at me. Told me that I wasn't his real brother. That a real brother wouldn't try to take his ranch away, which I suspect had been eating at him for a while. Well, that made me angrier. I gave him some money for a cab and left. On my way out I stopped a friend of ours and asked if he could make sure David got to the hotel on time.”

Once again Tanner relived that moment just before he left David, that tug of hesitation, of wondering if David would listen to his warnings. “I shouldn't have left him. I should have stayed and driven him back to the hotel myself.”

Keira stopped sewing and turned toward him, listening, David's saddle forgotten.

“David stayed at the party too long,” Tanner continued, his attention focused on his thumbs tapping together. “Of course, he drank too much and used the cab money I gave him to buy more drinks. He couldn't find anyone to drive him back, wouldn't call me and the buddy who was supposed to watch out for him was long gone. So David started walking back to the hotel. He wandered out into the street and was hit by a truck. He was killed instantly.” Tanner stopped there, too easily remembering that early-morning phone call that had destroyed Tanner's world.

And dropped a burden on his shoulders he couldn't budge.

To his surprise he felt Keira put her hand on his arm. “It wasn't your fault,” Keira said, echoing the words that everyone from his rodeo buddies to Monty and Ellen had tried to reassure him with.

The only one who didn't say them was Alice. Her silence clearly told him that she did, indeed, blame him for David's death. Her reproach was wordless but potent, and it only served to stoke the remorse haunting Tanner from that day on.

“David always made his own choices. Always went his own way,” Keira said, the sharp tone in her voice catching his attention.

“I should have stayed, though,” he said, dragging his gaze up to hers. “I should have made sure he got home okay.”

“You did what you could. You gave him cab money. You made sure someone was watching him. Knowing David, he was probably drunk, especially if he spent the money you gave him, as well. All of those were his decisions. His choices. None of them had anything to do with you.” Her voice rose with each sentence, her anger, somehow, giving him some small comfort. It was the same anger he had dealt with over and over with no resolution. Except to finish this season for David.

He released a humorless laugh. “Yeah. I try to tell myself the same thing.”

“So why don't you listen? You've always been a levelheaded guy. You're not a selfish, self-centered person. You've always cared about David. Everyone knows that.”

Somehow Keira's praise was like a balm to a wound that had chafed for years. Keira, of all people, knew David as well as he had. Had grown up with him.

Had dated him.

He pushed that thought aside. That was in the past.

As was David's accident.

“Thanks,” he said, looking up at her, holding her intent gaze.

“I mean it,” she said, her voice quiet but fervent. “You're a good man. I've always thought that.”

“Even after we broke up?”

She pressed her lips together, as if experiencing the pain of that again.

“I think we could have figured things out,” he said quietly. “I know I should have told you about Dad's will. I was just angry about the ranch, and even though we were fighting, we had a good thing going. I know we did. I tried to make it up to you. I wanted us to get together again.”

She slid her hand down and grabbed Tanner's hands, holding them between hers, squeezing them tightly as she shook her head.

“I know you did and...I'm sorry.” She bit her lip, then looked into his eyes, her own glistening. “I'm sorry I didn't stay. I'm sorry...” Her voice broke off then.

Tanner could only stare at her, the import of what she was saying taking root. The sincerity in her voice igniting a spark of hope. He squeezed her hands back, a thrill coursing through him at the contact. It had been so long since he'd touched her. Since he'd been close to her.

And yet, he felt as if David still stood between them. After all, he had been the last person to see her before she left Saddlebank.

“You didn't love him, did you?” The words burst out of him. He had to know. “David. You didn't love him?”

Keira slowly shook her head, her eyes locked on their intertwined hands. “Never. I just dated him because he wouldn't stop asking me. And...because he was your brother.”

“What do you mean, because he was my brother?”

Another pause, as if she was holding something back. Then her finger made a delicate circle on his. A small opening.

“I guess, I hoped he would tell me something about you. Tell me what was happening in your life. It was a way of connecting with you, even if it was secondhand. I didn't hear anything from anyone about you. My parents didn't know and I wasn't about to ask your stepmother.” She finally looked up and gave him a rueful smile. “I didn't like her much right about then. But I knew you and David stayed in touch. I thought...he could tell me what was happening with you.”

“Why did you need to know about me?” The question sounded like something a kid in high school would say. A deliberate question that he guessed the answer to already.

She didn't reply, but in her eyes he saw regret tinged with sorrow. “I didn't want us to be apart,” she said quietly. “In spite of what happened. In spite of me breaking up with you and then leaving Saddlebank, I still wanted to be with you.”

Questions still remained about her hasty departure but somehow, sitting here with her, their hands intertwined, they were brushed aside as unnecessary. After many years of silence they were together now. They were talking. And they were alone.

His sigh came from deep within his soul. “I missed you,” he said, dropping his pride, thinking back to the note she still had tucked in her Bible.

“I missed you, too.” She spoke so quietly he wasn't sure if she had actually spoken or if his own wishful thinking had created her words.

Then she blinked and it was the sparkle of tears in her eyes, the glistening track that an escaping tear made on her cheek that unmanned him. He could handle her anger, her aloofness, but her tears always broke down his defenses.

He gently brushed it away, his hand cupping her face, his thumb gently stroking her cheek. Her hand came up and she wrapped her fingers around his wrist.