The You I Never Knew (6 page)
“Holy shit,” Sam said under his breath. “Holy goddamned shit.” An icy wind blew over him from outside, but he barely felt it. He stood motionless in the doorway of the barn and watched Cody wield the shovel. His slim form bent and straightened; the light from the cracks in the eaves streamed down over him, down over the shining sandy hair and the clean profile and the unsmiling mouth and the eyes that were not quite blue.
“Holy shit,” Sam said again. Then he turned on his heel and strode away from the barn.
S
am McPhee’s kitchen appeared lived-in but not fussed over. Stainless-steel appliances, tile countertops, a garden window with a few tired-looking potted herbs struggling along. A coffeemaker hissed beneath a set of wall hooks with an array of mismatched mugs bearing imprints of various feed brands and drug names. Drug names? Atarax. Was that a veterinary drug?
am McPhee’s kitchen appeared lived-in but not fussed over. Stainless-steel appliances, tile countertops, a garden window with a few tired-looking potted herbs struggling along. A coffeemaker hissed beneath a set of wall hooks with an array of mismatched mugs bearing imprints of various feed brands and drug names. Drug names? Atarax. Was that a veterinary drug?
Brad would know, thought Michelle. Brad the pharmacy franchise owner. Her “boyfriend,” Gavin called him.
Feeling like an intruder, she helped herself to coffee. She had a devilish urge to poke around the rest of the house, but she resisted and sat down at the table. A tabby cat leaped onto the seat of the chair next to her, peering solemnly through crystal eyes.
“Hi there.” She offered a finger for the cat to sniff, then rubbed its fur. It turned its head nearly upside down beneath her scratching finger. “I bet you wonder what I’m doing here,” she said, and sipped her coffee. “I’m wondering the same thing myself.”
Outside, the wind kicked up whirlpools in the snow. The Border collie pounced on the snow dervishes, making a joyous game of it. In her wildest imaginings, Michelle had never dreamed she would find herself sitting in Sam McPhee’s kitchen, drinking his coffee and petting his cat. He wasn’t the sort she even thought of as
having
a kitchen, much less a cat.
having
a kitchen, much less a cat.
It took all her self-control to stay seated, to keep from running outside, grabbing Cody, and driving away, not stopping until Seattle. She dreaded telling Cody the truth. She wasn’t stupid; she knew her kid. Sam represented the sort of dad—the fantasy dad, the Disneyland dad—Cody had been secretly wishing for all his life. The swift ride, the cheap thrill.
What Cody was too young to realize was that the minute he gave himself to a guy like Sam, he was a goner. Sam would break the boy’s heart the way he broke Michelle’s so long ago.
But she was going to stay in Crystal City no matter what her instincts urged her to do. Because when it came to self-control, Michelle Turner was an expert.
On some level, she might even savor the visit, she told herself, watching the cat curl into a ball on the braided seat cover of the chair next to her. This morning she had awakened early to sunshine and new snow that had come silently in the night, covering every flaw of age and softening all the sharp edges of the world. The landscape looked as clean and stark as an unpainted canvas. The miles of white meadows and the mountains rearing against a tall cerulean sky had a calming effect on her; they always had. Here, she felt a sense of drama and richness she had been missing ever since her adolescence had given way to the brutal chaos of instant adulthood.
Though her mother had raised her in the hushed elegance of Bel Air, Sharon Turner had lived way beyond her means. Her unexpected death had left Michelle a legacy of unpaid taxes and debts. By the time all accounts had been settled, there was nothing left but grief.
Michelle could have prevailed on her father for help even after she’d left Crystal City. Writing checks was what Gavin Slade did best. But she had never asked. All the money in the world couldn’t provide what she needed far more than monthly rent—love, support, stability. Money was the least of her problems, and it was the first one she solved.
On her own she built a life she could be proud of—a kid who, until recently, had been great; a waterfront town house filled with furniture from Roche-Bobois, a Lexus, a ski condo in Whistler.
Hers had been a life that hadn’t slowed down since she’d fled Montana all those years ago. And now she was back, and she had no idea what to make of it, what to think, how to feel. Slowing down and giving herself time to think was dangerous. Seeing Sam again was even more dangerous. He had broken her heart once. She wanted to believe he had no power to do it again. But when she saw him at the arena last night, she knew a secret, fragile part of her still belonged to him.
All her instincts had rebelled against bringing Cody here this morning. But honor demanded it. Cody had trashed Sam’s trailer, and he had to make amends.
Truth to tell, Michelle had been incredibly curious. She had always assumed Sam had never amounted to anything more than a rodeo bum, rambling from show to show until the inevitable injuries of his sport retired him. She used to picture him battered and stiff at age thirty, tending bar in some little Western town. He’d wear his champion’s belt buckle, and behind the bar amid the array of beer nuts and whiskey bottles, there would be a few dusty trophies and photographs of him looking like a young Paul Newman.
There wasn’t a single photo in sight in this kitchen, not even one taped to the refrigerator. Odd.
She finished her coffee and rinsed the mug, taking a long drink of icy tap water. The window over the sink framed the distant mountain peaks rearing against the sky. As she gazed out across the empty, perfect meadows, a wave of nostalgia had swept over her. She’d spent so little time in Montana, yet it seemed like the place where her soul had always dwelt. What a magnificent sight to greet Sam when he got up in the morning. How different it was from the soulless cocoon of her office at the agency in downtown Seattle.
Sam had managed to confound her expectations. He didn’t seem to suffer any permanent injuries from the rodeo. He had a horse ranch with a comfortable house, sturdy outbuildings, covered and open-air arenas and pens. But in a way the place seemed as empty as her own town house.
Had he surrendered his dreams? Had it hurt? Had he simply awakened one morning to discover that the life he’d envisioned for himself didn’t match the one he actually had? Did she dare to ask him?
“Of course not.” Michelle stroked the cat. “It’s none of my business.”
As she watched out the window, a stocky dark-haired man on a tractor came out of the barn, towing a load of manure on a stone boat. The Border collie cavorted like a clown through the drifts of snow. Cody followed, wearing oversize boots and hefting a shovel over one shoulder. Amazing. He was actually working. It had been forever since Michelle had been able to make him do anything.
She took another drink, savoring the sweetness of mountain well water. Footsteps thudded on the back porch and a door slammed. She turned to see Sam standing in the kitchen doorway. Faded jeans, fleece-lined denim jacket, battered John Deere cap, gloves protruding from a hip pocket. The Marlboro man without the cigarette.
“I helped myself to coffee,” she said uncertainly. “Want some?”
He ignored the question. He flexed his jaw, shifted his weight to one side. Though he barely moved, a subtle threat seemed to emanate from him. It was hard to explain, but Michelle sensed a dangerous turbulence in the air between them. Old intimacy mingled with fresh suspicion.
He took a step toward her. “So when were you planning on telling me I have a son?”
His blunt words pounded at Michelle, but she felt no shock. In the back of her mind she had known since last night that he would figure out the truth based on Cody’s age. She folded her arms protectively across her middle. “God, if you said something to Cody—”
“What the hell do you take me for? Of course I didn’t say anything. Thanks to you, I don’t even know the kid.” His gaze flicked over her, measuring her contemptuously from head to toe and back again. “So I guess that means you’ve never told him, either.”
She returned his glare. “I didn’t see the point. I didn’t think he’d ever meet you.”
He grabbed the back of his neck in a distracted gesture. “Jesus Christ. You had my kid, and you never told me.”
“And this surprises you?” Too many years had passed for Michelle to feel bitter, but she did. The regrets, the resentment, the frustration, all came bubbling to the surface. “I was eighteen years old and pregnant. You’d run off to be a rodeo champ. Do you think I had the slightest idea how to track you down? And what makes you think I didn’t try?”
“Did you?”
“Of course I did, Sam. I was in l—” She broke off, unwilling to continue down that path. “Are you telling me it should have been easy to find you? Did you and your mother leave a forwarding address? Did you stay anywhere long enough to have one?”
“Permanent addresses were never my mother’s strong suit.” His voice was low and hoarse. “We weren’t all brought up in gated communities in Bel Air.”
She flinched at the implication. She and Sam came from different worlds, though at eighteen they had sworn it didn’t matter.
“I didn’t have a whole lot of time to spend trying to figure out where you’d gone. I had a baby to raise. Beyond the twenty-four hours a day that took, I couldn’t seem to squeeze in a missing-persons search.”
“I deserved to know, damn it.”
“Oh, right. So you could do what? Marry me?”
“So I could have a say in what you did with my kid. You never even gave me a chance.”
“Tell me an eighteen-year-old cowboy wants a
chance
with a baby.”
chance
with a baby.”
She was dangerously, humiliatingly close to tears. She refused to shed them. She had wept an ocean for Sam McPhee and he’d never come to find her. Crying now would only prove what Michelle had been trying to deny since seeing him last night. Seventeen years ago he had taken possession of her in ways she was too young to understand. She had never given herself so wholly to another person, nor taken so much from someone else. After Sam left, she had dreamed of meeting someone new, but she’d never found that depth, that completion, with any other person. So she learned to do without.
Michelle forced herself to get a grip, to stand up from the table so she didn’t feel at a disadvantage. “This is stupid. We shouldn’t argue about the past. We can’t change what happened.”
“Maybe not.” Unhurried yet unrelenting, he walked toward her, stopping only inches from her. The smell of snow and wind clung to his clothes, underlying the unique scent of him. She thought she had forgotten it.
“Sam—”
“We’ve got a lot of talking to do.” His low voice caught at her, mesmerized her. “Problem is, now that you’re here, I want to do a hell of a lot more than talk.”
“You’re crazy.” She didn’t know this man anymore, but she could feel the anger and passion seething from him. She searched his face, wondering about the lines that fanned out from his eyes.
“Crazy? I’ve been called worse.” He took another step toward her. “I couldn’t sleep for thinking about you last night.”
She inched back. “You came in here wanting to talk about Cody.”
He stuck a thumb into his jeans pocket, his hip propped on the edge of the counter. “So talk. I’m listening.”
This can’t be happening, Michelle thought. “I don’t know where to start.”
“You had my child and you never told me.” He spoke coldly, the words hard as stones. “How about starting there?”
“The day I found out I was pregnant, I went to see you. And you had left without a trace. I don’t believe I owed you a thing.”
The heat of his glare was a tangible thing; she could feel it blasting away at her. “I won’t discuss this with you if you’re hostile,” she added.
“Excuse me if I’m a little disoriented by all this. It’s not every day a woman I used to sleep with shows up with a kid she had sixteen years ago.”
“I didn’t know I’d find you here.”
“Well, here I am, honey.” He spread his arms mockingly. “I’m surprised your daddy didn’t warn you.”
She was surprised, too, but she wouldn’t admit it to Sam. She wondered if he knew she and her father were strangers, and that only Gavin’s illness had brought her back.
“We should be talking instead of arguing.” She sat back down at the table, took a deep breath. “Maybe I was wrong. I should have searched high and low for you. But everyone said I’d get over you. Said I was better off without you, that I’d go off to college and meet someone who—” She broke off and shrugged.
“—wasn’t a born drifter with a hopeless lush for a mother,” Sam finished for her.
“I never said that.”
“You didn’t have to.”
“I had to think about Cody, too. I spent my childhood ducking the paparazzi. I’m very protective of him in that way.”
His eyes narrowed. “Oh, yeah, the tabloids would’ve had a field day with us. Gavin Slade’s only daughter makes it with a ranch hand.”
She flinched, knowing he wasn’t far off the mark. As a child, she had shown up occasionally in the scandal sheets—a grainy photo taken through a long lens:
Gavin Slade’s Love Child
, the caption always read.
Gavin Slade’s Love Child
, the caption always read.
A juicy story like an illicit Romeo and Juliet–style affair would have revived the attention she shunned. That was why she worked so hard to maintain her anonymity. Every once in a while a reporter in search of a scoop came sniffing around. One even snapped her photo when she was pregnant. The incident had scared her so much that she moved to Seattle, where no one knew her.
Sam sat down across from her. His hands were big, not as work-scarred as she would have thought. She caught herself staring at those hands, remembering how she used to rub Bag Balm on them to soothe the calluses.
“None of that old stuff can matter now, Michelle. What matters is that we have a son.” He clenched his hand into a fist on the table. “A son. I can’t believe it.”
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