The Lies Uncovered Trilogy (Books 4, 5, and 6 of The Dancing Moon Ranch Series) (8 page)

Sophie glanced at Rick, whose expression remained sober, then took her seat, and Rick sat beside her. After everyone was settled around the table and Grace had said blessing, and while hands were reaching in all directions for the food bowls, Sophie said to Rick, while serving herself a portion of zucchini, "I thought you were going to town."

"I already went," Rick replied.

"I'm not trying to pry," Sophie said, "just curious. Where did you go?"

"To see a friend."

"A woman?" Sophie asked without thinking, and immediately wished she hadn't. If that's where Rick had been, she didn't want to know.

Rick nodded and offered nothing more.

It bothered Sophie that he'd turned to someone else to sort through things. That wasn't the way it should be. He'd also turned to a woman, not a male friend. That bothered her even more, and it was all she could do to keep from asking: Is she smart? Is she pretty? Is she someone special? Did you hug her? Kiss her? Confide in her?

It never occurred to her that Rick could be involved with a woman, though there was no reason why he shouldn't be. He was a prime catch for any woman, a man who had it all together, who had a cross to bear with his mother, but suffered it with dignity.

He was also the man who, after knowing him for eighteen years, she was falling in love with. Too little too late, she realized, and tried to work up an appetite for the spread of food on her plate, finding it difficult to swallow, her throat was so dry.

Rick picked on that, and said, "You okay?"

"No," Sophie replied. "It's been a stressful two days. Did you stop by your mother's place again?"

'No, but I will first thing in the morning," Rick said. "Are you going to square things away with your family?"

Sophie shrugged. "I don't know. Does it matter to you?"

"What you do still matters," Rick said. "That hasn't changed."

"What has changed then?" Sophie asked.

"Maybe we can talk about it later."

"Tonight?"

Rick nodded. "Meet me at the footbridge later," he said. "We can talk in private there."

"Fine." It all sounded suspiciously to Sophie like Rick planned to inform her that she should go back to California, get her act together, drop him a line on occasion, be a good little girl and stay out of trouble, and that he'd always care about her, but their lives were going in different directions now, and on, and on, Rick in big brother mode where he'd stay, because now, that's precisely how he felt.

***

Later that evening, as Rick stood beside Sophie on the footbridge that crossed the creek behind the lodge, he started out by saying to her, "I don't know how this will all turn out with my mother. I hope she'll turn herself in so you won't have to file a report, but if it comes to that, my dad and I and the rest of the family will be behind you. Meanwhile, you and I need to square a few things away."

"All right, why don't you just lay it out for me," Sophie said, in a tone edged in cynicism. "In fact I'll get you started. First, I should head back to California and square things away with my family. Fine. I'll think about doing that, sometime in the near future. Next, parties at Buzz Newman's are taboo. That's no problem. I have no desire to attend parties like that ever again. Oh, and if a guy happens to catch me naked in the hot springs pool I'll immediately get out and get dressed so I won't be tempted to seduce him. Does that cover everything?"

Rick gritted his teeth to keep from yelling at Sophie. He wanted to reason things out, or at least try to understand what was going on with her, and she was intent on making sure he didn't slip back into being in love with Sophie mode. Initially, when he found her drinking at his mother's he figured the wine went to her head because she never drank, and he assumed she'd bounce back to the person he'd always believed her to be and that would be the end of it, but from that point on, everything with Sophie went downhill. Looking askance at her, he said, "Is this about your anger at your mother, or is all of it aimed at me?"

Sophie looked at him, and in the glow streaming down from the utility light near the lodge, he saw puzzlement on her face. She reaffirmed it when she said, "Why would you think my behavior of the past few days has anything to do with you?"

"I don't know," Rick replied. "It's just that you seem to want to be everything opposite from what I've admired about you over the years."

"What, that I was this perfect parochial school girl who never dated, and never uttered a cuss word, and never looked at boys or thought about sex, and did everything my parents wanted?"

"You were the kind of girl any decent guy would admire and want for a wife."

"Then according to you, because of one incident at a party, I'm suddenly relegated to unmarriageable status."

"Smoking pot, getting drunk, and being ready to have sex with a stranger isn't an incident, Soph. It's a warning sign."

"So, Dr. Hansen, having seen the warning sign, would you want to marry me?"

"This isn't about you and me," Rick said. "We've never talked about marriage, at least not in reference to each other."

"But you've thought about it, haven't you?"

"Maybe."

"Well, I'm sorry to be a disappointment to you," Sophie said, "but I no longer want to live up to the expectations laid out for me while I was growing up. That's not saying I want to go to a party and get drunk and smoke pot again, because that was a one-time thing I'll never repeat, nor do I want to go out with a guy like Buzz. In fact, I'm not inclined to want to go out with anyone ever again. So are you satisfied? Sophie Meecham heading for the nunnery?"

Rick was annoyed with Sophie's continued sarcasm. He'd noticed over the years that whenever things didn't go her way, she used sarcasm to cover up what was really going on with her. "You know that's not what I mean."

"Then maybe you need to clarify things for me," Sophie said. "You slip into big brother mode, or Mr. Psychologist mode, and think you can pick up where my father and Justine failed, but right now I really don't want anyone telling me how to run my life."

"Yeah, well, I don't particularly want to be big brother or Mr. Psychologist either, but while you're running your own life, you'd better step back and take a long look at yourself. You might not see a very pretty picture. I know I don't."

"Fine then. If you don't like what you see, why are you here with me instead of in town with whoever it is you go to see?"

"What are you talking about?"

"I'm talking about the girl you went to see earlier tonight."

"Why should it matter to you if I went to see a girl?" Rick asked, surprised that Sophie brought it up. It hinted of jealousy, which didn't fit the Sophie he'd known over the years. But right now nothing about the woman standing with him fit the Sophie he'd known.

"It doesn't matter to me if you went to see a girl," Sophie said, but in a tone that suggested it did matter, which Rick found disturbing. He didn't want Sophie to have the kind of feelings for him he'd had for her over the years because he was looking for a reason to want Sophie out of his life. He was fed up jumping through her hoops. But right now she was waiting for him to tell her about some woman in his life who didn't exist, and he was torn between making up a fictitious woman to test her feelings or telling her the truth so whatever feelings she might have would fade away and he'd go back being good old Rick, her buddy, and be done with her and get on with his life. "Just for the record," he said, deciding on the latter, "I went to see Flo."

Sophie eyed him with uncertainty. "The woman who used to work at the ranch?"

Rick nodded.

Sophie stared at him without emotion at first, but then one corner of her mouth lifted with the hint of a smile, and for the first time since she'd arrived Rick saw tiny points of light in her eyes, like she was pleased. Then she turned from him and said, while looking down at the water tripping over rocks in the creek below, "Why did you go see her?"

"Just to talk."

Sophie looked askance at him. "About your mother?"

Rick shook his head. "She's a good sounding board when I want input from someone I admire." As soon as he said the words, he knew Sophie would take them as a stab at her, a person he no longer admired.

"I'm sorry I can't be what you want," Sophie replied, reaffirming what he'd surmised.

Rick covered her hand with his, and said, "I'm not trying to turn you into someone I want, Soph, I just don't want you screwing up your life because you're mad at your mother."

Sophie looked down at their hands and said nothing, but after a few moments she looked toward the cabin where she'd stayed when she'd first been brought to the ranch and turned over to a father who, until that moment, hadn't known she existed. He could still picture her the day he walked with his father toward the cabin to see if she wanted to build a snowman. She was standing on the couch in the cabin, looking out the window, and when she saw him coming she smiled, and his whole world lifted. It had been the Christmas from hell, with his parents having had one of the worst fights ever, and Sophie was devastated because she'd asked Santa to bring her mother back from heaven and he didn't. But building a snowman, and shoving a carrot nose into his frosty face, and adding Oreo cookie eyes and a baseball cap, and seeing Sophie laugh made things better. Just like seeing her laugh now would make things better...

He looked up when the headlights of a vehicle coming down the road caught his attention. It drove past the lodge and pulled up in front of his father's house.

"Were you expecting anyone tonight?" Sophie asked.

Rick shook his head. "We'd better go see who it is." What first came to mind was that Sophie's folks had arrived and would be looking for her. He wasn't sure he was ready to witness the reunion. Sophie wasn't as angry as when she first arrived, but he knew she wasn't ready to welcome them with open arms either.

They crossed the gravel road that cut between the cabins and the lodge and walked the short distance to his father's house, entering through the back door. But when they stepped into the living room, he knew there was something drastically wrong. He saw it on the faces of his father and Jayne and Becca, and on the faces of the two men standing in the living room.

One of the men stepped forward, and said to Rick, "I'm Detective Culver with the McMinnville Police. Are you Richard Hansen?" Rick nodded. 

"Are you the son of Susan Renee Hansen?"

Rick looked at him in alarm. "Yes, why?"

"I'm afraid we have some very bad news." The man waited a moment for Rick to digest that, then said, "Your mother was found dead this morning from an apparent drug overdose. There will be an investigation since all suicide deaths are considered homicides until proven otherwise. At this point we have no reason to believe there was foul play."

After absorbing what he'd just heard, Rick asked, "Why suicide? She could have simply taken too many pills. My mother did have a drinking problem she tried to hide."

"She left a note," the detective replied. "It's being held until the investigation is complete."

"I'd like to see the note," Rick said. "Can I come to the station with you now?"

"I'm afraid not," the detective replied. "Since the note was not on the body, the investigating agency placed it in the Police Property Room. A copy of the note will be made part of the medical examiner's permanent record, but the original copy will be released to you when the case is complete, which should be in a few days. However, suicide notes are not public record, so it's exempt from public disclosure." The detective asked a series of questions and continued with routine jargon, most of which Rick missed. But after the men left, it bothered Rick that he felt nothing. No shock. No grief that his mother was dead. It was as if all emotion shut down.

Scanning the faces of his father, and Jayne, and Becca, and Sophie, all of them waiting for his response, he said nothing, just turned and went into his bedroom and shut the door.

It wasn't until then that he realized he felt nothing for Sophie either. It was odd, after years of loving her, not to care.

CHAPTER 6

Sophie felt almost overwhelmed with guilt and remorse. She couldn't shed the notion that she was responsible for Susan taking her own life rather than face the consequences of her actions. Nor could she set aside the stricken look on Susan's face when she realized Sophie was standing in the doorway. Yet, there was the other side of Susan. The sweet, fun side who treated her to a pedicure and toenails with stars on them, and sat in the chair beside her at the salon while they had facials, and took her shopping for a new outfit.

This is fun, I've never had a daughter...

"Sophie?"

And that was another part of what was so troubling. In only two days she'd grown fond of Susan. But as troubled as she was about Susan's death she couldn't imagine what Rick's state of mind must be. Nor did she know where he was. When he went into his room the night before he never came out, and when his father asked if he could come in, Rick said he wanted to be alone...

"Sophie?"

She'd slept on the couch, not wanting to disturb Rick under the circumstances, but what worried her most was that when she knocked on his door early that morning to see if he was okay and got no response, she poked her head in the room and Rick was gone...

"Sophie?" A hand on Sophie's shoulder startled her. She glanced around and found Jayne standing behind her. "Oh... umm... yes?" she turned to see what Jayne wanted.

"I'm sorry honey. You seemed so far away," Jayne said. "Are you okay?"

Jayne's words of concern hit Sophie hard and before she could stop them, tears welled and her throat choked up, and the last thing she wanted was empathy. She deserved nothing but disgust for her small-minded grievance against Justine and her entire behavior from the moment she arrived at the ranch. If she hadn't insisted on staying with Susan she wouldn't have witnessed the scene, and whatever acts Susan engaged in would have remained behind closed doors, and Rick would never have known the extent of it...

"Sophie?"

Sophie blinked several times, sending the tears that were brimming over her eyelids trickling down her cheeks. Brushing them away with her knuckles, she said, "I'm fine. Just worried about Rick. Do you know where he is?"

Jayne shook her head. "Sam's getting dressed now and plans to go look for him. Rick's not talking to anyone, and that's not good."

All Sophie could think was that Rick should have been able to come to her and talk it out. In the past, he would have, but now he wanted nothing to do with her, and with good reason. He deserved better. He deserved a woman who loved him from the start, for who he was. But loving Rick in a romantic way was still too new to process, and she needed time to figure out if it was truly romantic love she felt after all these years, or if what she felt was simply a reaction because, for the first time since she'd known Rick, he'd rejected her.

The front door swept open and Jack walked in the house, spotted Jayne, and said to her, "Is Sam around?"

"He's getting dressed," Jayne replied. "Why?"

"I want to tell him something about Rick."

Sam, hearing Jack, emerged from the hallway while shrugging into his shirt. "What about Rick?" he asked.

"I just wanted to let you know that Rick took his horse and headed up the trail to the cabin," Jack replied. "He said he didn't want to talk to me or anyone else."

"I'd better go after him," Sam replied. "I don't want him up there alone."

When Sam started for the door, Jack placed his hand on Sam's arm to stop him. "Leave him be," Jack said. "He needs to sort through this on his own and in his own way. I know. I've been there. When Lauren killed Jackie I didn't want to see anyone or talk to anyone. I just wanted to be away from things. Rick’s not in danger of pulling what Susan did."

Sophie couldn't help catching the venom in Jack's words. Referring to Susan taking her life as
pulling something
seemed callous and unfeeling. The woman had been so distraught, she killed herself. When she looked at Sam, she sensed he felt the same way she did.

Which Sam affirmed, when he said, "I think this family needs to keep in mind that Susan was Rick's mother. She might have been difficult to deal with over the years, but there was a time when she put her life on hold for Rick, even conceived a..." He stopped short and glanced at Sophie. Which she found puzzling. She waited for him to complete the sentence. Instead, he shrugged, and said, "Out of respect for Rick, just hold the comments."

Jack's jaws bunched, and Sophie could see he was struggling to keep from saying his peace. Then he let out a long audible sigh, and said, "Sorry. Like I was saying, give Rick some space. If he doesn't come back by evening I'll ride up there and make sure he's okay.

Sophie clamped her jaws shut to keep from asking if she could go. Rick wouldn't welcome her, but she couldn't help thinking he needed her, even if he didn't realize it. Then she wondered if it wasn't more about her needing him, needing him to tell her things were all right between them. But she also knew that everything she wanted at the moment was self-serving, just as it had been from the moment she stormed out of her parents' house and drove six hundred miles. From that time on it had been all about Sophie Meecham, the spoiled, self-centered girl whose parents hovered over her, and sent her to parochial school, and did everything in their power to see that she led a decent life. And she rewarded their efforts by getting drunk, smoking pot, and trying to seduce Rick.

***

By late afternoon, Rick had still not returned, and Sophie was frantic with worry. Something could have happened on the way, the horse bolted and threw him, or he'd gone to the spring,   slipped and hit his head and drowned, or he was despondent and did something out of character.

Deciding it was irrelevant whether Rick wanted her there or not, she headed for the stable, where she saw a string of ranch guests, just back from their trail ride, walking from the stable to the lodge. Finding Jack inside the stable tending the horses, she said to him, "I'm worried about Rick and I want to ride up there and talk to him. It's not good for him to be there by himself, even if it's what he wants."

Jack stopped brushing the horse, and said, "You heard what I told the others."

"I know, but this is different. Rick's up there because he wants to be away from everyone around here offering insincere condolences for someone they didn't like, but I was the last person he knows who saw his mother alive and he needs me to help him sort things out."

Jack said nothing, but Sophie knew it was because he was considering what she was saying. There was an almost genetic trait with Hansen males when they were considering something. The muscles in their jaws bunched, their eyes became intense, and their nostrils flared slightly. Over the years she'd seen that look on Rick's face, and on his father's face, and each of the boys on down the line. Except for Marc. Instead, his face would have become pensive, and he'd tilt his head slightly, and his eyes would roll upward.

"I can ride up there," Jack said. "You don't need to go."

"I want to go," Sophie insisted. "Rick needs to talk this out and I'm the one he's talked to over the years. We've always stayed connected."

Jack pressed his lips together, which came after the jaw bunching and the intense look, and which meant he was about to concede. Another Hansen trait. Then he said, "I'll get Adam to ride up with you then."

"That's fine," Sophie replied, "but I might want to stay overnight. And just for the record, there's nothing going on with Rick and me in case you're worried about that."

"I'm not," Jack said. "I'll saddle Adam's horse while you go get Adam."

"Give me fifteen minutes to get a sleeping bag and change of clothes and I'll be back."

The ride up the trail with Adam was awkward, Sophie realized, when they'd been gone only about fifteen minutes. Adam barely had a word to say, and she knew it was because he was concerned not only that she was the one to go to the cabin to be with Rick, but that she'd be staying overnight. To break the silence by focusing on Adam, instead of what was going on with Rick and her, she said, "Emily will be a beautiful bride." When Adam didn't reply, Sophie realized he'd nodded.

Adam removed his hat, ran his hand over his hair and replaced his hat, and Sophie took that as a kind of communication, so she continued. "I assume you'll be living off campus in an apartment when you return to college."

"Yeah," Adam replied.

When he said nothing more, Sophie knew they were back to square one—Adam disapproving of what she was doing. After another long awkward stretch, she said, again to break the uncomfortable silence, "You do know there's nothing going on between Rick and me. We've been friends for years. I just don't like the idea of him being alone up there at this time."

"Sometimes a man needs time to himself to think," Adam said, eyes straight ahead.

"Which means you don't want me going there," Sophie replied.

"No, it means exactly what I said."

Sophie maneuvered her horse alongside his. "At the party the other night, that's never happened to me before. You know I don't normally drink and do guys. It was a one-time thing. It won't happen again."

"You're twenty-three," Adam said. "You can pretty much do what you want, and you don't own me an explanation."

"But you're disgusted with me because I did something stupid, and you're right to be disgusted. Rick is too. In fact, he doesn't have the same feelings about me as he did before."

"I know," Adam said. "Rick told me,"

Sophie looked at him with a start. "He did?"

Adam nodded. "That's the only reason I'm taking you up there."

Sophie looked straight ahead and said nothing, but the reality of it hit hard. It was unlike Rick to talk about his feelings to anyone, but because he had with Adam, it was like he'd carved his feelings in stone.
Rick Hansen no longer loves Sophie Meecham
. And she wanted to carve her own feelings in stone:
But Sophie Meecham loves Rick Hansen
.

"What can I do to make things right again?" she asked.

Adam looked askance at her, and replied, "Right again for who? You or Rick?"

"That's pretty much a double-edged sword," Sophie said. "To make things right for me would be for Rick to care about me again, which from your viewpoint would be bad for Rick. And to make things right for Rick, in your estimation, would be for me to go back to California."

Adam said nothing, but his silence said it all. He'd never been like that with her before. He'd always joked with her, or teased her, or kidded with her about anything and everything. This was a whole different side of Adam she'd never known. But then, Adam was also a man now, not the boy she'd known over the years. And whereas the younger Adam would have laughed off the idea of Rick carrying her away from a party because she was too drunk to walk, Adam, the man, saw it the way Rick did. Grown men viewing the world through mature eyes.

But Adam also had a blind spot when it came to Emily, and Sophie considered starting a diatribe about how Emily had been in an on-and-off relationship with a guy in Adam's high school class for years, with Adam always there to pick up the pieces in Emily's life during the off times, but figured he wouldn't see the parallel between that and what was happening with Rick and herself, so she said nothing.

She was relieved when the trail leveled off into a mountain meadow, and the cabin came into view. "You can turn around here," she said. "If Rick knows you're with me he'll expect you to wait and take me back, and I want to spend some time with him."

Adam pulled his horse to a halt, but his face was troubled.

"I know what I'm doing," Sophie said, "and it has nothing to do with me. Rick has things on his mind he needs to talk about and I can't tell you what they are. Maybe he'll tell you himself in time, but right now he needs me as a sounding board."

Adam seemed to take that to heart, and Sophie wondered if Rick might have confided in him about his mother, or maybe Adam overheard Sam and Jayne talking, but he looked less angry, like what she was doing might be okay. But before Adam turned away, Sophie said, "Thank you for riding with me."

Adam didn't smile, but the scowl she'd seen earlier was gone. "I suppose it's good you're here," he conceded. "No one at the ranch much liked his mother and he knows it."

"Which is why he's here by himself, and why I should be with him," Sophie said. "During the two days I spent with his mother she did some nice things for me and I liked her. He'll know that and won't feel so alone."

Sophie waited until Adam was well down the trail before she guided her horse across the meadow in front of the cabin to a loafing shed connected to a peeled pole corral, and tied her horse to the hitching rail. As she started untying her sleeping bag and duffle bag, she glanced toward the cabin and saw no sign of Rick, either looking out the window or standing in the doorway, and was a little concerned that he hadn't seen her ride by, or heard his own horse whinny as she was approaching.

After removing the saddle and blanket, she stowed them in a room in the shed that housed racks for saddles and hooks for bridles, then turned her horse into the corral, grabbed her sleeping bag and duffle bag off the ground, and started toward the cabin, all the while feeling apprehensive that Rick hadn't seen or heard her coming, or at least stepped onto the porch to find out why his horse whinnied when she arrived, and when she knocked and he didn't answer, she felt a stab of panic.