Salvation in the Rancher's Arms(86)

Her eyes still stung from the amount of crying she’d done.

The tears had come from a mixture of hurt and frustration. She felt betrayed by Caleb’s lies, trapped by his confession and angry at herself for acting so rashly, ordering him out of his own home.

She knew even before he disappeared over the hill that she should go after him and bring him back, but pride had choked the words in her throat where they withered and died. Now each passing moment of his absence carved a separate scar onto her soul.

She tried to justify her actions. He had lied to her. Lain with her, touched her in a way no man ever had or ever would again. All the while he’d known the truth and kept it from her. For the first day, this bolstered her anger and kept her from falling apart, from riding into town and begging him to come back. But by the second day, her self-righteous indignation began to erode as the niggling voice in her head kept asking questions she didn’t want to face.

Hadn’t she done the same thing to her brother? She’d kept their mother’s secret about his true father from him his entire life, justifying her actions by saying it was for his own good. He was better off not knowing. She was only trying to protect him, and maybe herself, if she were being honest.

How was that any different than what Caleb had done?

It wasn’t.

She tried to console herself with the fact she would have lost him anyway. Facing down Shamus was a one-way trip. She would end up dead or incarcerated by the end of it, a sacrifice she had been willing to make if it meant her family would be safe. But those plans now lay in tatters, another casualty of Caleb’s truth. Without him here, there was no one to look after her family. In sending him away, she had destroyed her only chance to protect them. What would she do now?

She hoped keeping busy would slow the tumult of emotions twisting through her and allow her to make sense of things, but so far no answer made itself known. She had painted herself into a corner and could see no way out.

“He did what he thought was right,” Freedom said, her voice filtering up from behind the line of sheets.

Rachel gritted her teeth. She had told Freedom what happened, needing the older woman’s strength to lean on and any guidance she had to give.

“He should have told me right from the start,” Rachel said, trying to salvage the remnants of her anger and wrap it around her heart to shield against the pain.

“And what would you have done if he had?”

“I would have told him to leave!” Right at the beginning, before she fell in love with him, before she knew what it was like to have a man love her back. Before her heart broke into so many pieces there was no hope of putting it back together.

“Can’t kick a man off his own land,” Freedom pointed out.

Rachel groaned and let her head fall back until the warmth of the sun bathed her face. Freedom was right. She’d had no right at all, not in a legal sense. But to her, the deed was little more than a piece of paper. It didn’t matter whose name was on it, this land was hers. It was in her blood and her bones. She couldn’t imagine life without it, or where she would go if Caleb returned and demanded she leave.

“Maybe he kept his peace because he figured you’d had enough pain without dishing you out a second helping. Maybe he jus’ wanted to love you and not complicate the whole thing with—”

“—the truth? Yes, pesky thing that truth.” She ought to know. She’d kept her own secrets, and now Brody held her accountable in the same way she held Caleb. Being angry at him made her the worst kind of hypocrite. Though, in truth, in the dead of night when she allowed herself to examine her motives, she wondered if she wasn’t angrier at herself for sending him away than at him for giving her reason to.

She tossed the sheet over the line with enough force that it slipped off the rope and landed on the grass below.

“Don’t be takin’ your anger out on my clean laundry. You got yourself into a pickle sending Mr. Beckett away and you’ll jus’ have t’ figure out a way to make it right.”

Rachel picked up the sheet and gave it a sharp snap, sending pieces of grass flitting into the air. “I know you’re right. I just don’t know how I’m going to do it. I was awful to him, and maybe I had a right, but maybe he won’t see it that way. You can’t make amends to someone who isn’t interested in hearing your apology.”

“Only one way to be knowin’ how interested he is in listenin’. But first, why don’t you go see to the visitor comin’ at us and leave my laundry alone afore you double my work.”

For a brief moment, Rachel’s heart soared with hope, but it was short-lived as she peeled back the edge of the sheet and quickly recognized Hunter’s tall form sitting straight in the saddle.