Читать книгу A Rancher To Remember - Patricia Johns - Страница 15

It was odd to be standing here with a man she’d known for so long, talking like virtual strangers. Sawyer wasn’t quite the same as Olivia remembered him. She figured that would still be true even if his mind was fully intact. He might not have his memory, but these last hard years hadn’t been erased; she could see that in the lines on his face and the strands of premature gray around his temples.

Sawyer crossed the kitchen to the coffee maker and reached for a stack of filters. Olivia watched him work for a moment. He’d bulked up a bit since the last time she’d seen him, making him move with more confidence. His hands—she noticed them as he fiddled with a coffee filter—looked tougher, more calloused. He glanced instinctively toward the toddlers, who sat in the middle of a plastic minefield of toys.

“You used to like baseball,” Olivia said.

“Did I?” Sawyer glanced over his shoulder. “Playing it or watching it?”

“Both,” she replied. “You played in high school, at least, but that was before I was in high school, and before we properly met. You’re older than me by a couple of years, by the way.”

“Right.” He smiled.

“We used to play catch in the park, you and me. When you weren’t working. You worked a lot.”

“Did you play baseball, too?” he asked.

Olivia would have...but there had been some women who’d liked to play with the local team who’d been part of spreading those rumors about her, and avoiding them had been simpler and less painful than standing her ground and facing them down. At that point she’d been so tired from the constant badgering around town, that she’d just let people believe what they wanted to about her. If they wanted to think she was sleeping around, then so be it, because no one was listening to her anyway. It was easier in the moment, at least. But it had confirmed that getting out of Beaut was the only option she had.

“No, I wasn’t into baseball,” she said. It wasn’t entirely true—but it wasn’t really a lie. Joining the team would have been fun under different circumstances, but all she had was reality, not a fairy tale. And in her reality, baseball hadn’t been right for her at all.

“Huh.” Sawyer cast her a peculiar look, then turned back to making the coffee again.

“Why?” she asked. “Do you remember something?”

“No, you just really tensed up when you said you weren’t into baseball,” he replied. “What’s up with that?”

“Stuff I’d rather forget,” she said, forcing a smile, then nodded toward the coffee maker. “You remember how to make coffee.”

Sawyer nodded. “I realized that yesterday. How did I take my coffee when you knew me?”

“How have you been taking it so far?” she asked.

He screwed the lid back onto the coffee canister. “Lloyd has been handing it to me black.” He flicked the button on the coffee maker and turned back toward her. “I’ve been following suit when I make it myself. Is that how I liked it?”

Olivia shrugged. “When I knew you, you used to take a dribble of cream and about five spoons of sugar.”

He frowned slightly. “That sounds gross. Are you sure?”

“Maybe you changed how you took it,” she suggested. “I mean, maybe you started worrying about your health.”

Or maybe Mia had started worrying about it. Olivia couldn’t speak for what had happened in his marriage.

“I’ll try it both ways,” Sawyer said. “Maybe you’re right.”

And maybe she wasn’t... She’d adored Sawyer, but had she known him as well as she thought?

“How much did you and I hang out?” Sawyer asked.

Was he thinking the same thing?

“Quite a bit, back in the day,” she said. “After you graduated, a lot of your friends had left for the city, and I didn’t have a lot of friends anymore, besides Mia. So you and I kind of bonded over the lack of other options.”

“That doesn’t sound like a great foundation.” But a smile tugged up the corner of his lips. “What do you mean, anymore? What happened to your friends?”

“I wasn’t terribly popular,” she hedged. “I was quiet. Kind of boring. And senior year, everyone decided to pick on me.”

“Oh...” His gaze filled with sympathy. “I’m sorry.”

“It was a good thing, in a roundabout way,” she countered. “For us, at least. We might not have given each other much of a chance if we’d had other options. We wanted opposite things out of life, so we were a bit of an odd couple.”

“Did we date?” he asked. “You called us a couple.”

“No, I meant that in the most platonic way possible.” She felt her smile slip.

“But you were friends with my wife,” he said. “I’m just trying to piece it all together here.”

“Before you two started dating, Mia hung out with us a lot, too, and she was crazy about you. She harbored this huge crush, and it took you a while to clue in.”

Sawyer met her gaze, but didn’t answer.

“So, maybe you had more options than I did,” Olivia conceded. “But Mia was beautiful and fun, and she could ride better than you.”

“I don’t know why, but I feel mildly insulted with that,” he said with a soft laugh. “How well do I ride?”

“Better than you play baseball,” she joked. But then she remembered that he didn’t know, and she sobered. “You’re a really good rider. You always have been. You go on the cattle drives to move the herd, and you come back with all these stories about hungry wolves and belligerent cows.” She paused, remembering the way his eyes would sparkle when he embellished his tales. “You taught me to ride.”

“Am I a good teacher?” he asked.

“No.” She crossed her arms, as if she needed to defend her position on that. But he really hadn’t been. He expected his students to function on instinct, like he did.

“No?” He laughed softly. “But you said I taught you. That’s something.”

“You’re bossy,” she countered. “You yell a lot when you’re teaching. After that first ride, I wouldn’t take your calls for a week.”

“Oh. Sorry. Obviously, we made up.”

“Just barely.” Olivia chuckled. “We had fun, mostly. When you weren’t bossing me around and telling me I’d get myself killed. We were good friends.”

“So, this is your chance to turn the tables, I guess,” he said, sobering. “I’m the one who doesn’t know what he’s doing.”

“I’m a nicer teacher,” she said with a short laugh. “You don’t have to worry that I’ll take my revenge.”

The coffee maker burbled as it dribbled fresh brew into the pot, and Bella toddled up to her father and held a plastic toy up for his inspection. Sawyer bent down, looked at the toy seriously, then said, “Very nice. I like it.”

Bella looked at the plastic block in her fingers as if seeing it again for the first time. Then she smiled up at Sawyer, her blue eyes glittering.

The girls remembered their father just fine, and they obviously recognized their daddy in this broken version of him. Olivia recognized the old Sawyer in him, too. She always had been able to get him to relax. But there was something different there, as well...something foreign around the edges. When you stripped away someone’s memories, maybe it loosened up other parts of their personality that had been held down.

Or maybe there had been sides to him that she’d never known...that he’d never opened to her. That was possible, too.

But she had been his friend, even if she’d kept her distance in the last few years.

Olivia pulled her phone out of her jeans pocket and glanced down at the screen. No missed calls. That meant that despite all the messages she’d left for her brother, telling him she was going to be in Beaut, Brian hadn’t called her. She’d come back to town for Brian...to try and mend this rift between them. If it weren’t for him, she wouldn’t have returned. Her life here was over—this town couldn’t be home for her again.

“Sawyer, I’m going to go make a call,” she said.

Sawyer looked up from where he crouched next to his daughters. “Sure.”

Olivia slipped out the side door and walked a few paces away from the house. She could hear the growl of a tractor’s engine somewhere in the distance, and the sunlight warmed her shoulders. There was no breeze right now, just sunny warmth, and she dialed her brother’s number once more.

It rang four times, then the voice mail kicked in: “Hi, it’s Brian. You know what to do.”

She hung up. She’d already left three messages.

Lord, what do I do? she prayed. He won’t talk to me, and I’m kind of intimidated here. He’s my little brother, and he can’t stand me. Do I deserve this?

Olivia had said she was leaving Beaut in order to go to school, but there was more than a simple desire for an education and a career that pulled her away. This town was the kind of place that had a long memory. Olivia had always thought of herself as pretty tough, but those rumors had been devastating. People looked at her differently. They whispered when she walked by. It didn’t matter that the rumors weren’t true—they were juicy, so they had spread like wildfire. They had affected the way Olivia saw herself, eroding her sense of self-worth. Just as soon as she and her mother had scraped up enough money for college, she’d left for Montana State University and never looked back.

The problem was, she felt guilty. She’d had good reason to leave Beaut, but she’d left Brian behind, and she’d always been a little extra protective of him. From where Brian stood, Olivia had abandoned both him and their mom. They hadn’t known she was sick yet, and when Olivia left town she’d thought she had decades left with her mother in her life. And now that she wanted to make up with her brother, he wasn’t interested.

Still, Brian didn’t know that she might have a solution to their mutual money problem...

As if on cue, her cell phone rang, and she looked down, hoping to see Brian’s number. It wasn’t—it was the Whites. She sighed and picked up the call.

“Hello?”

“Olivia.” It was Irene. “You must have arrived in Beaut by now.”

“Yes, I’m here,” she said. “I arrived this afternoon.”

“Have you spoken with Sawyer yet? I mean, I hate to hound you, but Wyatt and I are just sitting here waiting, and the wait is worse than when Wyatt was running for office!” Irene laughed at her own little joke.

“Right.” Olivia sighed. “Well, I’m going to need a bit of time. As you know, I haven’t been back to town in years, and I cut a lot of ties when I left, so...”

“Will Sawyer not talk to you?” Irene asked.

“No, it isn’t that, it’s just... I appreciate that you’re willing to help Brian and me with the hospital debt, and believe me, I don’t want to jeopardize that. But I need to be able to do this in my own way.”

“We don’t mean to be demanding, but we are offering you a rather large recompense for your time,” Irene said.

“But it is my time,” Olivia replied, then tried to soften her tone. “I want to help you reconcile with Sawyer—you know that. But this can’t be rushed.”

“We’d just like a general timeline, so we aren’t jumping at every phone call,” Irene said.

Was that a reasonable request? Probably, but the situation here in Beaut was not what any of them had anticipated, and Olivia suddenly felt tight-lipped about the details.

Sawyer was incredibly vulnerable right now, and he’d asked her to help him remember...not to complicate his life further with his late wife’s parents. If they knew he didn’t remember them, they might seize the moment to press him when he had no ammunition to fight back. She couldn’t let that happen. When his memory returned, she could present their case, but until then, she couldn’t take advantage of his weakness for her own gain—or for the Whites’.

“I’m not playing games. I don’t know how long this will be, but I will call you the second I have news.”

Irene sighed, then there was the muffled sound of her covering the phone and the murmur of voices. Then she came back on the line. “We appreciate anything you can do on our behalf, Olivia. You’re like a daughter to us.”

A daughter who had to do them favors to get one in return...but still. They’d kept Olivia close after Mia’s passing, and in a way, it seemed to keep Mia’s memory alive for all of them.

“I’ll be in touch as soon as I can,” Olivia said. “I promise.”

After saying goodbye, she hung up the phone, and stared at it in her palm for a moment.

The Whites wanted results, and they were used to getting them. Wyatt White was a senator, and his wife had been the financial engine behind his political career. They were used to having to wait on results for things like elections, but not being forced to wait by people like Olivia.

She was putting off the very people who could lift the burden for her and Brian, but her conscience wouldn’t allow her to do any less.

Father, guide me, she prayed. She needed God’s blessing more than she needed the Whites’ money.

* * *

Coffee had been something familiar—making it, waiting for it, listening to the sound of the burbling coffee maker... And Sawyer had so little that was familiar. Olivia said he used to like his coffee sweet and creamy, so he was giving it a try. He took a sip, and made a face. Too sweet, a bit filmy on his tongue.

The screen door clattered shut behind Olivia as she came back into the kitchen.

“Don’t like it?” she asked. “Which one is that?”

“This is cream and sugar,” he replied, and turned to dump the mugful of coffee down the drain. He poured a fresh mug and took a sip of the black coffee. It tasted fresh, bitter, smooth. “Mmm. Yeah. This is good.”

Olivia pulled out her phone, glanced down at the screen, and then pocketed it again. She looked distracted, and he felt a wave of misgiving.

“Are you putting off plans for me?” Sawyer asked.

“Hmm?”

“You’re checking your phone,” he said. “If you have stuff to do, I don’t want to keep you here. I know my uncle is worried about me, but I can handle the girls for a while—”

“No, no,” she said quickly. “I’m fine. It’s nothing.”

He didn’t believe that. He might not remember Olivia, but he knew what tension looked like, and she had tension written all over her. It was brought out by baseball and phone calls, apparently.

“I’m not as helpless as I look,” he said, and he made a point of not touching the bandage on his head.

“I don’t think you’re helpless,” she said.

“Sure, you do.” He fixed her with a direct look. “And I might not have my memory, but I’m okay. I don’t want to be your obligation here.”

“Sawyer, you have a brain injury. You might have all the best of intentions, but you need a little looking after. Sorry to break it to you.”

A faint smile tickled at the corners of her lips, and he thought he saw some friendly teasing in that gaze. Maybe it wasn’t so terrible to be spending a few days with this woman. They’d been friends once, apparently, and he could tell what he must have seen in her before. She was likeable.

When she looked at him like that, he was reminded again of that fragment of memory—the woman in the black coat, how he had put his hand out to touch her. She turned...and he couldn’t remember more than that. Except this time, he recalled snow on the ground—mucky, wet, dirty snow on the edge of a sidewalk. Nothing else. It was frustrating having these little shards of memory that didn’t connect. He needed to find where they fit in.

And he had already tried doing that sitting inside.

“Okay, so even if I am recovering here, it doesn’t mean we have to sit in the house and stare at each other. You want to get out for a bit? I have a feeling Lloyd is going to be a while.”

“I have that same feeling,” she agreed. “What did you have in mind?”

“Well, my uncle doesn’t want me helping out on the ranch until my memory’s back. So maybe we could start out where I used to work—at the barn maybe.” He looked down at his rough, calloused hands. “You said I used to work a lot, right?”

“You did,” she agreed. “It might jog a few memories.”

Bella and Lizzie looked up at them, and Olivia glanced around the kitchen. “We should bring something for the girls. What do they snack on?”

“Um...” Yeah, and he’d just been saying he could take care of things on his own. “I’m not sure.”

Olivia opened a cupboard, looked through the contents and then moved on to the next.

“Yesterday they each had a sippy cup around this time of day. Lloyd got it for them,” he added.

Olivia went to the fridge and opened it. “Ta-da.” She pulled out two cups, both filled with milk. The toddlers beelined toward her, holding their hands out for the milk, and she gave them the cups. The girls started to drink. Bella spun in a circle as she slurped on the rubber mouthpiece, and Lizzie sat down to drink.

“Cereal?” Sawyer asked, pulling a box of Cheerios out of a bottom cupboard.

“Put some into a baggie,” Olivia said.

“I don’t know where to find those...”

The next few minutes were spent putting a toddler-friendly snack together and piling everything into a diaper bag that Sawyer did know the location of. It turned out that there weren’t baggies, but there were plastic containers, and soon enough they were heading out the side door, each of them carrying a child in their arms, and the diaper bag slung over Sawyer’s shoulder. He glanced back at Olivia, and shot her a smile. It felt good having her here with him—a little less lonely. Or was he just responding to being with a beautiful woman? Here’s hoping he wasn’t that shallow.

They headed down the gravel drive toward a winding road. It was downhill from there toward the barn—Sawyer had stared at it all morning, trying to tease some memories free. A young blue jay squawked at them from high in a tree.

“Birdie,” Bella said.

“Yeah, that’s right.” He smiled down at his daughter, then glanced over at Olivia. “So, tell me about you and me. What should I remember?”

“You’re older than me by about two years, so we didn’t run in the same circles,” she said. “But you liked to eat in the diner where I was working, and one night you were the only guy in there. And we started talking. Turned out, we both liked the same movies.”

“And rest is history?” he said wryly.

“I guess so. We got along. I mean, we didn’t have a lot in common. You were a ranch hand, and I was a recent high school grad, saving up to go to college for nursing. You were ready to spend the rest of your life here while I was pretty determined to get out of town. Your girlfriend had already graduated a year before, and after she worked for a year, she left for college. I think she was going to travel a bit first. Anyway, before she left, she dumped you. That was at the same time I was graduating. So when we met, you were a bit heartbroken.”

“Ouch...” he murmured, but he didn’t feel it. It just seemed like the appropriate thing to say. This was like listening to a story about other people. He couldn’t remember any of it.

“We just...clicked,” she said. “We cheered each other up.”

“So, what did we do together?” he asked.

“Oh, we went to movies, ate out, went to the local fair...that kind of thing. I was your date at some family event, but that was just because your great aunt had been overly attached to your ex-girlfriend, so you needed some distraction.” She laughed softly. “She wasn’t overly attached to me...”

“So I have a great aunt?” he asked.

“You did. She passed away, I think.”

Their boots crunched over the gravel, and Bella started to wriggle in his arms, so he set her down and let her walk. Olivia followed his lead and put Lizzie down, too.

“And you came back to see me...” He looked over at her, and some color tinted Olivia’s cheeks.

“I came back for my own reasons. Seeing you was...a bonus.”

“Ah.” Sawyer pushed his hands into his pockets. “You aren’t going to tell me, are you?”

“Tell you what?” Her gaze flickered toward him.

“What was really between us,” he said.

Olivia sighed. “I’m being honest. We were friends. All friendships have different balances between them, I suppose.”

“And ours?” he prodded.

“Like I said, your girlfriend left you for college,” she said. “And I was going to do the same thing. I had plans to get my education and I didn’t want a life here in Beaut. We both knew that a romantic relationship between us couldn’t go anywhere.”

“So there was some history between us...something more than just friendship,” he clarified.

“You ended up marrying my best friend,” she replied. “That’s the history that matters.”

“I agree, but you and I stayed in touch, it seems.”

“I came to the wedding,” Olivia replied. “I was the maid of honor. But after that, I...gave you two space.”

“So, we didn’t manage to hold on to that friendship after all,” he said. Why was she being evasive here? He could sense that there was something more she didn’t want to tell him.

“No,” she said.

He nodded. Apparently, he’d had his own life with his wife. It seemed strange that they’d just lose touch like that, and a little sad they’d lost a friendship that had mattered to them very much. What wasn’t she telling him? “So, why did you come back? Why did you show up here?”

“Because—” Olivia cast him an apologetic look. “I came back to see my brother. I have to patch things together with him one way or another, and he’s really bitter toward me. I’d hoped that you might be able to help me with that...but obviously, you have your own stuff to deal with right now.”

They both paused as the toddlers got distracted with a stick. She wasn’t here for him, exactly. That might explain the tension he sensed in her earlier.

“Maybe I can still help,” he offered.

“No.” Her voice firmed. “You need to get your memory back. Don’t worry about me. I’ll sort it out.”

“I guess I’m not much use right now,” he admitted.

“Not for this,” she said. “Just focus on getting better.”

The barn wasn’t far away now, and Sawyer’s gaze swept across the cow-dotted field, over the corral that held a couple of horses. Was this familiar? He dug about inside his head, looking for something, some sense of connection at the very least...but there was nothing.

“Horsey!” Lizzie said, pointing. She hopped up and down. “Daddy! Horsey!”

“She must like horses,” Olivia said. “Should we take them over to get a closer look?”

“Yeah, sure.”

But his mind wasn’t on his daughter’s delight. He was wondering why he felt some strange sense of connectedness with Olivia, and had felt nothing when Lloyd had shown him pictures of his dead wife. What did that say about him? Had Sawyer been a good husband? Had he harbored feelings for another woman? He didn’t like that thought. He might not remember anything, but he did have a sense of right and wrong.

Who was I?

And would he be proud of who he was once he figured that out?

They headed down a straight road that led to the barn. There were no workers around that Sawyer could see, and the lowing of cattle that came on the grass-scented breeze was oddly soothing to his system. He sucked in a deep breath, feeling the muscles in his shoulders relax.

Bella came over to Sawyer and held up her hands. He picked her up and she settled against his shoulder, one tiny hand planted on the back of his neck. Lizzie came running up, too, but Olivia swept her up into her arms and made an exaggerated surprised face.

“What happened there?” Olivia asked Lizzie. “Did I get you?”

Lizzie laughed, and Sawyer couldn’t help but smile. He’d known these toddlers for all of two days that he could remember, but he was already attached. Sawyer led the way over to the corral.

The largest of the two horses ambled over toward them, pushing his nose into Sawyer’s chest, snuffling against his pocket.

“I didn’t think to bring a treat,” he said, glancing over his shoulder at Olivia.

“All we have in the bag is Cheerios and cheese cubes,” Olivia said with a low laugh.

“Horsey...” Bella breathed, and then she put a hand on the horse’s long nose.

The horse pulled back, shaking his head, and moved over toward Olivia. She took a step back.

“Sorry, buddy,” she said.

The horse ambled off again, and Sawyer felt all of his own tension seeping away. Bella clearly loved horses, but it looked like he did, too. There was something about those rippling muscles, the shining coats, the smell of dust and sweat and the tang of manure...

“Num-nums,” Lizzie said, patting Olivia’s shoulder. “Num-nums.”

“I think she wants her snack.”

Sawyer passed her the diaper bag, and she squatted down, put Lizzie on the ground and opened the bag. Lizzie looked into the depth and pulled out a plastic container of cheese cubes. Olivia opened it for her and she reached in and came out with a single cube between two chubby fingers.

“Mmm. That looks good,” Olivia murmured.

“Num-nums!” Bella said, launching herself downward.

“Whoa!” Her motion caught Sawyer by surprise, and he almost dropped the girl before he was able to get a grip on her wriggling body. He managed to deposit her on the ground right side up. Bella headed straight for the cheese cubes. Such trust—the kid hadn’t even paused to appreciate that she hadn’t landed on her head.

Olivia held the container out toward Bella. Sawyer was glad that Olivia was here to think of things like snacks. Maybe he needed more help around here than he thought.

“Lizzie?” Olivia stood up, and Sawyer looked around, scanning for the girl. She was gone...and both of their gazes swung toward the corral.

Somehow, the toddler slipped away in those few heartbeats when her sister had the attention, and little Lizzie with her ruffled curls and little pink running shoes stood in the center of the corral, her face tipped upward in rapture as she stared up at the massive stallion.

Sawyer’s heart thudded to a stop.