“So, he put you on the list, right?” sheprobed.
“Yeah, he did.” Thad took another measured sip and set the bottle on thefloor.
They rocked in comfortable silence for a few minutes before Sam tried to pick their session back up. “So, what happened withLacey?”
Thad was quiet for so long she almost repeated the question. Something about the way he stared across the yard, his fingers tightening on the arm rests of his rocking chair, made herwait.
“She was there, at WalterReed.”
She knew from the way Thad had come to Hope Ranch that Lacey wasn’t in the picture anymore. Had she taken one look at him andrun?
Her lungs burned at the thought, but she wasn’t about to press him. It was always best to let them offer up theinformation.
“Told me she loved me, no matter what. I sent her away. Girl like her never was meant for a guy like meanyway.”
A piece of her heart shattered right then and there. She’d learned all about the importance of keeping a distance from her patients. Her supervisors in her clinical rotations had warned her she’d come to care for some of her patients like family, but that it was in no one’s best interest for her to let those emotions show. Clients came to her for a steady source of strength—they didn’t need the weight of her emotions atop their own. But none of those counselors had invested their blood and soul into Hope Ranch. And if there was one thing she’d really learned in college, it was to think for herself. In that moment, Sam knew Thad needed a personal connection more than anythingelse.
She reached over and threaded her fingers through his. After a minute, he squeezed hers in return. And they rocked like that for a moment, his pain between them, until the Jeep headlights appeared in thedistance.
Thad cleared his throat, withdrew his hand and stood, making a show of dusting off his dirty jeans. “Looks like you got your own past to dealwith.”
She gave Thad a halfhearted smile. “I’m afraid you’reright.”
Thad stepped off the porch and walked down the gently sloped incline they’d installed for wheelchair accessibility. He turned when his feet hit the dirt. “He doesn’t look at you like just a friend,chère.”
And then Thad strolled to the bunkhouse, tossing his water bottle up into the air as he walked. Sam pressed her hand over her heart, trying to push some of the ache away. Each and every man out here had been through so muchsuffering.
She’d learned how to recognize it. The shadow hovering behind their eyes. The way they walked, like the entire world was out to get them. And sometimes, like in Thad’s case, the sense that their experiences had crushed themcompletely.
When she’d first looked into Cord’s eyes earlier today, she’d gotten a hint of that shadow, but she’d been so shocked to see him that every other feeling or observation had been snuffed out by her long dormant feelings forhim.
Still, she knew something had happened to Cord, something he wasn’t eager to talkabout.
Ryder parked the Jeep near the porch and killed the lights. He got out first, Cord seconds behind him. “Hey,Sam.”
“Ryder—” she nodded, “—did you show himeverything?”
“Yep.” Ryder pulled his jean jacket from the vehicle and walked up the porch steps, his limp barely noticeable. “I’m turning in. See you in themorning.”
“Thank you,” Sam held out a hand to him as he passed, and he gave her five before entering the house through the back door and heading to his bedroom, to the left of the kitchen. He’d fit into the ranch so well that it had felt natural for him to take on a more permanent role at the ranch as aworker.
Cord was a little slower to make it up to the porch. When he did, he wrapped an arm around the post marking the entryway and looked at her. “Those cattle were slaughtered about a hundred yards from thehouse.”
“Yeah, I saw them.” Talking about Cord with Thad had brought back more memories, and seeing him now, so rugged, made her insides melt. The flannel shirt suddenly seemed too hot, too constricting to leave on. She shrugged out of it and flung it across a rocking chair, welcoming the cool night air on her barearms.
Cord watched her just as intently as he had before, when they were out back behind the barn, only this time his gaze was hard instead of soft. She could easily see why Clint Fury had sent him to do this job. Though he was outwardly calm, she could sense an air of lethality in hisstillness.
Her second day out on the ranch she’d come face-to-face with her first rattlesnake, and seconds before rattling his tail, he’d gone completely still and looked her dead in the eye. In that second, she’d known he could take her life before she couldblink.
Cord was putting off that exact same vibe rightnow.
“A man bold enough to do something like that is either so desperate to get his message across he didn’t feel he had a choice or too mad to care. Either way, it’s not good. I don’t want you out of my eyesight until we catchhim.”
“That’s not possible. I have this whole ranch to run. Work has to be done.” And spending every waking hour near him would drive her up the wall withneed.
“You hired me to catch the bad guy,right?”
“Yes, of course I did,” she stutteredout.
