Sawyer lowered his hands. “Maisy called you?”
Darlene nodded. “She read Tad’s story in a rodeo magazine and thought it might save your life. A life that’s extremely important to her.” She paused. “I wish I had fought harder for the man I love.” She stood, and all the men stood with her. Sawyer was too stunned to do more than just sit there. “Now, if you’ll excuse me, I think I’ll take a walk around this beautiful ranch and let you have a chance to talk with your friends.””
“Me and Lucas would be honored to show you around, Ms. Miller,” Chester said. The two old cowboys led Darlene out of the barn.
When they were gone, Mattie and the boys all sat back down. They didn’t say anything and Sawyer was happy about that. He was still trying to absorb what Tad’s widow had said. Not just about the disease, but about Maisy.
Mattie must’ve been thinking the same thing because he tapped him on the arm and signed. I knew Maisy loved you.
Sawyer signed back. She doesn’t love me. If she loved me, she wouldn’t have lied to me.
Mattie looked at him with sad eyes as he signed. Maybe she lied to you because she does love you. I love you and I lied to you because I didn’t want the brother I loved so dearly to hate me.
Sawyer stared at his brother. That’s exactly what Maisy had said when he’d asked her why she lied. She hadn’t wanted him to hate her for taking him away from rodeo.
“Okay, if you’re gonna talk with your hands, you need to talk with your mouth too,” Cru said. “The only sign language I know is the letter d you taught us for the Double Diamond Boy’s oath. And I think we should take an oath right now to kick Sawyer’s ass if he doesn’t pull his head out and quit rodeoing. Talking doesn’t seem to be working.”
“He doesn’t have to quit rodeo,” Logan said. “He just has to quit saddle bronc riding. He could go back to roping.”
“Or he could just take up ranching,” Holden said. “He already has the land.”
“There’s a lot of things you can do, Sawyer,” Val said.
Mattie must have read their lips because he signed. You can become a veterinarian like we planned as kids. I need a good partner.
They had planned to become vets as kids, but Sawyer had backed out in college. Partly because he hadn’t wanted to compete with Mattie, but also because he’d wanted to ride wild horses. He’d gotten to ride those horses and done quite a bit of damage to his brain in the process. Now maybe it was time to go back to school and strengthen it.
“Well, don’t just sit there, Saw,” Cru said. “Are you going back to bronc riding like an idiot or are you going to listen to common sense and quit?”
Sawyer stood. “I don’t know. All I know is that right now I need to go see about a cowgirl. But I need to use someone’s truck. Two stubborn old cowboys disabled mine.”
Lincoln pulled a set of keys from his pocket and tossed them to Sawyer. “Don’t use the siren.”
Of course, Sawyer turned on the siren as soon as he got on the highway into town. He needed to find Maisy and get some answers. He kept the siren on all the way to the Lucky Lane Trailer Park. It was only when he pulled into the first lot that he turned it off and sat there in stunned silence.
Maisy’s trailer was gone.
Chapter Twenty
It had to be the sappiest idea Maisy had ever come up with in her life. If she didn’t want to be completely humiliated, she needed to quickly take down the poster board sign she had taped to the back of her trailer before Sawyer got there.
If he got there.
He hadn’t answered her text message so there was a good possibility he wasn’t coming. Which made her feel like crying. But she refused to act like a weepy little girl. If he didn’t show up, she would deal with it like an adult woman. She’d cuss him out loudly and clearly as she packed up her trailer and left everything and everyone she’d come to love since arriving in Simple.
She swallowed the huge lump in her throat and turned the bacon that was sizzling in the pan before she set down the tongs and headed to the back of the trailer. The sign looked even sappier then she’d thought. She wasn’t an artist. The lettering was crooked and the two horses’ heads looked more like dog heads. Totally annoyed with herself for thinking this had been a romantic idea, she stepped up on the hitch and pulled the poster board off the shiny metal of the Airstream and carried it into the trailer. After pulling off the tape on the back, she slid the sign between the refrigerator and the counter.
The picture she’d taped on the refrigerator caught her eye and she smiled at the baby who stared back at her.
The tracking dogs had found her father’s grave. While Lincoln couldn’t let her have Sam’s body for a proper burial, or the personal items found, until after Willaby’s trial, he had taken a picture of a photograph he found in Sam’s wallet and sent it to Maisy. She’d made a copy and taped it to her refrigerator as proof that her daddy had loved her enough to keep her baby picture.
It seemed Miss Gertie was right. There was good in all people and bad in all people. Maisy wished her daddy had had more good. She also wished she had gotten to know him. But knowing he’d loved her in his own way made it much easier to let him go.
Her daddy was her daddy. Bad or good. She had accepted that. Now she had her own life to live. She would make mistakes—she’d already made more than a few—and she would have to live with those mistakes. The biggest mistake was lying to Sawyer. But she had asked for his forgiveness, and if he couldn’t give it, there was nothing else she could do.
Maybe it was time to pack up and move on.
She winked at baby Maisy before she headed back outside to finish cooking the bacon. But once outside, she forgot all about the bacon when she saw the horse and rider on the horizon. She knew immediately by the way the man sat in the saddle on the black stallion who it was.
The sight of Sawyer galloping toward her made her feel as nervous as a cat at a dog show. She smoothed her hair, straightened her dress, and stomped the dust off her Christie Evans boots. The closer he rode, the more nervous she got.
She had gone over what she wanted to say in her mind the night before. In fact, she’d stayed up most of the night going over and over it. But when he reached her, all thoughts seemed to dissolve and all she could think of was how delicious he looked in his western shirt and jeans with his black Stetson tugged low on his forehead.
He reined in the horse and swung down from the saddle before Angel had even stopped. He dropped the reins and strode toward Maisy. She tried to think of anything to say to let him know how sorry she was for lying and how much she loved him. But before she could get a word out, he pulled her into his arms and kissed her.
It was a hungry kiss. The kind of kiss that made a woman feel like she’d been badly missed. She threw her arms around his neck and kissed him back for all she was worth, trying to communicate with her body what her brain couldn’t. One kiss led to another and another. Maisy figured they probably would’ve gone on kissing forever if Angel hadn’t nosed his way in between them.
She drew back with a laugh. “Hey there, Angel. Were you getting a little jealous?” She patted his neck before she took his reins and tied him to the trailer hitch. When she turned back to Sawyer, he was watching her with a look on his face that made her tummy tingle.