The Lies Uncovered Trilogy (Books 4, 5, and 6 of The Dancing Moon Ranch Series) (5 page)

Sophie always felt deep affection for Rick's stepmother, and for his dad, and Aunt Grace and Uncle Jack, and Grandma Maureen. Actually, she'd felt affection for everyone at the ranch, including the pack of Hansen boys who kidded her like she was their sister, and for Maddy who was a gem of a little girl, who was also the heart of her six big brothers' affectionate teasing, and the apple of her daddy's eye. Over the years she'd wanted to be a member of a big happy family like theirs, and she'd told Rick early on that she wanted lots of kids someday, but made no commitment as to who the father would be.

"Honey?" Jayne said, when Sophie didn't respond.

"Oh, sorry. I was a little distracted," Sophie replied. "And yes, I'd love to help with the wedding. When should I start?"

"Anytime," Jayne replied. "You're welcome to stay with us until Grandma Maureen returns from visiting her brother. I know she'd love to have you with her. Until then, Rick won't mind sleeping on the couch." She looked at Rick and waited for his response.

Rick glanced up and shrugged. "That's fine," he said, then went back to studying.

Sophie started to say,
don't put yourself out on my account
, but said instead, "I'm okay where I am." Rick never looked up, but Sophie saw the disgusted look on his face.

Jayne gave Sophie anther hug, and said, "I have to round up the ranch guests and lead them to the barn for a trail ride, but when you're ready to start work, come over to the lodge and we'll take it from there." Jayne let herself out through the kitchen.

Sophie was about to leave too, when she glanced out the front window and saw a truck pull up and was surprised to see Buzz Newman get out. He stood with his hands on his hips looking at the house for a few moments, then started toward it.

Hearing footsteps on the front porch, Rick glanced up from what he was doing and went to the door. Finding Buzz standing there, he said, "What do you want, Newman?"

"I'm looking for Sophie," Buzz replied, "Your mother told me she was here."

"She's not here to you," Rick said.

Buzz raised his palms outward in a kind of submissive gesture, and said, "Look, I'm not here to cause trouble, I just want to see Sophie. And I'm not the wild guy I was in high school. The party was kind of a get-together for old time sake, but we're all beyond that now."

"So, what do you want with Sophie?" Rick asked.

"To take her to dinner tonight to show her I'm not the guy at the party. We were all a little too high," he admitted, "but it was all in fun."

"Yeah, I suppose a guy like you would view it as fun," Rick said, remaining standing in the doorway, while making no attempt to move aside.

Buzz glanced beyond Rick and saw Sophie, and said to her, "Hey Sophie. Can we talk on the porch?"

Before Sophie could respond, Rick said, "She's here with me so you can just get back in your truck and be on your way."

Buzz's eyes shifted from Rick to Sophie, then back to Rick, and he said, with brows drawn, "Are you and Sophie an item?"

Rick took so long to respond Sophie stepped forward, and said, "No, Rick and I are not an item." When Rick still said nothing, Sophie added, "And yes, I'd love to have dinner with you tonight. You can pick me up at Rick's mother's house."

She was hoping Rick would say something, even go into big brother mode and forbid her to go, but he did nothing, just stood with his hands curved into fists at his side, and his jaws bunching, like he was either holding back a string of cuss words, or trying to keep from throwing a punch at Buzz. When he did neither, Sophie brushed past him without saying anything and went to her car.

Buzz caught up with her, and said, "What's with you and Rick? He acts like a jealous lover."

"That's just Rick," Sophie said. "It's a habit. He's been hovering over me for years."

"Then you're okay with dinner tonight?" Buzz asked.

Sophie glanced at the house and saw Rick standing on the porch, that same disgusted look on his face.

He acts like a jealous lover...

Oddly, she wanted him to be jealous. She wanted him to feel something for her again. But he looked as immovable as a mountain, and just about as indifferent.

"Dinner would be nice," she said. "I'll see you around seven." Refusing to look at Rick again, she got in her car and drove off.

***

"Son, you're going to wear a path in the rug," Sam said to Rick later that evening, as Rick made another pass across the living room. "She's a grown woman with a mind of her own so there's nothing you can do, and pacing the floor won't help."

"I didn't tell you everything," Rick replied, pausing long enough to look at his father.

"Then sit down and let's talk through it," Sam said. He dragged a kitchen chair away from the table and poured a mug of coffee for Rick and set it in front of the chair.

Rick took a sip of coffee then set the mug down and went to stand in front of the window, hands on his hips, eyes focused on the night. "It's not just that she's out with Buzz," he said. "When I picked her up from the party, Buzz was pretty cocky when he said she was a hot little number and he wondered where I'd been hiding her. Buzz doesn't take hot little numbers to dinner without expecting payback, and with the kind of girls he dates he gets what he wants. With Sophie though, all he'll have to do is give her a drink or two and she'll be all over him."

"You're overreacting," Sam said. "Lots of guys might jump to the conclusion that Sophie's a hot little number because she's blond and good looking, but she also has a solid set of morals, so she'll know when to put the skids on anything Buzz might try."

His back to his dad, and his eyes still focused beyond the window, Rick said, "When I found Sophie at the party she was drunk and had been smoking pot and was draped all over a guy, and she didn't much give a damn where his hands were, which weren’t in his pockets." He turned then, and from the surprised look on his father's face, wondered if he'd revealed too much about Sophie. But he couldn't keep it all inside either, and his father had always been his sounding board, more so in his adult years than when he was a teen.

"Sit down, Rick," Sam said. "We really need to talk this out."

Sucking in a long breath to calm the erratic beating of his heart as the image of Sophie at the party replayed in his mind, for the umpteenth time, Rick lowered himself to the chair, wrapped his hands around the mug of coffee, and sat staring at it.

Sam reached out and placed his hand on Rick's arm, and said, "Sophie's been coming to the ranch with her folks since she was five, and we love her like she's a member of the family. Well, she is a member in a sense, with her dad married to Aunt Grace's sister. I've also known how you've felt about her for as far back as I can remember, but when the people we love take a wrong path, they're the ones who let us down most, maybe because we do love them, so it hits harder."

Still staring at his hands on the mug, Rick said, "Before she came this time I'd been looking at rings." Even though his gaze was on his hands, Rick could feel his father's eyes on him, and he didn't have to look up to know there'd be empathy there.

"Then you and Sophie had been discussing marriage?" Sam asked.

Rick shook his head. "Over the years we'd talked about what we wanted in marriage, and because she'd graduated from college and wasn't involved with anyone I thought maybe the time was right to start a relationship."

Sam leaned toward Rick, and looking directly at him said, "If Sophie was drunk and smoking pot at the party, and letting a guy put his hands on her, you need to think about this seriously before you start chasing after her. Nothing can mess up a man's life more than a messed up wife, whether she's an alcoholic, or doing drugs, or cheating on him."

"That's the problem," Rick said. "I know Sophie never did anything like this before. She's mad at her parents and she wants to get back at them."

"She might not have done it before," Sam said, "but she's giving you a look at how she handles things. Learning her step-mother slept around would be troubling for any girl as sheltered as Sophie's been, but there are a lot worse things in life than that. Sophie taking off and driving six-hundred miles and turning to drugs and alcohol to deal with it is definitely a side of her none of us have seen."

"I know," Rick said, in a glum voice. "I just don't know what to do about it."

"Maybe it's not a good idea for her to work here right now," Sam said. "I can talk to Jayne about cutting things short so she has to return home. It would give you time to think things through without the distraction of having her around, and there's no question, having a woman you love around leaves you open to rationalizing anything and everything, even having sex with her. Although I know that's the last thing you intend to do with Sophie, the desire to make things complete often overrides good judgment."

"That won't happen," Rick said.

"How can you be sure?" Sam asked. "Being in love does strange things to a man."

Rick raised his eyes from the mug, and said, "I already had the chance. When I brought her home from the party she tried to get me to have sex with her and I said no."

Sam patted Rick on the shoulder. "Then you're a better man than I am," he said. "And I'm proud of you."

Rick smiled, even though inside he felt about as desolate as he'd ever felt in his life. Then he glanced at his watch. Almost nine o'clock. Sophie and Buzz would be finished dinner by now, and then what? Go to Buzz's house for a nightcap? Puff on a joint? Have sex?

Sam refilled Rick's mug. "Just like you're doing, I went through hell when I suspected your mother was cheating on me. The reasoning side of your brain tells you she's with another man because she doesn't love you and to forget she exists and get on with your life. Then your heart tells you there's no life without her, and you're back trying to reason through it. All I can offer right now is for you to help Sophie get through this thing with her parents, but then you need to give it some space and see how Sophie handles other problems in her life. After your mom and I divorced I gave it time and waited for the right woman to come along and it paid off. With Jayne, my life is truly blessed. The only thing I regret is that I couldn't give her a child. I would like to have given you the brother you've always wanted."

Rick thought about that, and about what his father told him about becoming sterile from chemotherapy. He also knew he'd have to face the possibility that he too could be sterile from chemo. He knew he'd have to have himself checked before committing to any woman, especially Sophie, who wanted lots of kids. Looking at his father, he said, "Talking about having kids, how much chemo did I have before my cord blood transplant?"

"Only enough to empty your bone marrow and suppress your immune system," Sam replied, "but you were only three, so your reproductive system was still undeveloped."

"Enough chemo to suppress an immune system is enough to do serious damage to a reproductive system, even if it is undeveloped," Rick pointed out.

Sam reached out and patted Rick's arm. "I'm sure you're fine. You went through a normal puberty."

Not satisfied, Rick said, "What was the name of the hospital where I had the cord blood transplant? I could look into getting my medical records and see what my prognosis was at the time." His father didn’t reply, but the look of alarm on his face told Rick something was drastically wrong. "You’re hiding something from me," he said.

Sam sucked in a long breath, and said, "It was a stressful time in our lives. You were dying and needed the transplant, and when Adam wasn't a match I thought we'd lose you."

"Then they didn't think Marc could be a match?" Rick asked, baffled. Marc looked nothing like Adam, but as fraternal twins they came from the same DNA pool.

"Marc hadn't been tested yet," Sam replied. "The boys were born a few hours apart."

"So, when Aunt Grace was in hard labor with Marc, they'd already tested Adam?" Rick asked. "I thought the tests took longer."

Sam's eyes shifted nervously, and he said, in an uncertain voice, "The laboratory... umm...  rushed things because you were so sick."

"Can they do that with cord blood? Rush things?" Rick asked.

When Sam nodded vaguely and offered nothing more, Rick was certain he was holding something back and he was determined to learn what it was.

And then it came to him. The color of Marc's eyes. Changeable. Shades varying from hazel to smoke gray to green depending on the light, but never brown like both of his parents...

The same color as his mother's eyes.

Which explained why a woman who didn't want children in the first place would not only turn her firstborn over to live with his father when the marriage split up, but would also give up Marc to be raised by his aunt and uncle when she became pregnant a second time. But that didn't explain how his mother got pregnant with Marc in the first place, since his father was already sterile by then. Unless she'd had an affair and nobody wanted Marc.

Across the room, Rick's cell phone rang. Rick rushed over and picked it up and saw Sophie's cell number on the LED, which sent a shot of adrenaline rushing through him.

"What's going on, Soph?" he asked.