Sun Kissed (22 page)

He hoped he wasn’t, either.

B
y late afternoon Samantha and Tabasco were back at Sage Creek Ranch and settled in. The first thing she did after seeing to her sick stallion’s comfort was make her rounds of the stable, greeting every horse, and then staying for a bit to make each animal feel special.

“When you run out of horses,” Kyle said to her over a gate, “I’ll take one of those hugs. I’ve missed you, too.”

For once Kyle’s manner failed to make Samantha bristle. As was often the case, it wasn’t so much what the man said, but how he said it that bothered her. But she was far too distracted right then by mixed emotions to pay him any mind. She was delighted to have Tabasco home again, but also sad because her time with Tucker had ended.

“And I just might give you one,” she popped back. “I’ve missed you, too. Thanks for helping Jerome hold down the fort while I was gone.”

When Samantha reached Blue Blazes’s stall, her heart went still and quiet. She opened the gate and stepped in side, her gaze immediately shifting to the scabbed-over
lacerations on his black legs. The stallion whickered and bobbed his noble head as he moved toward her. Samantha stepped in to hug the horse’s neck.

“Oh, Blue,” was all she said. It was enough. Anything else that needed saying came from her heart, and Blue heard the message.

“Close call, huh?”

Samantha glanced over her shoulder. Carrie stood out side the gate. In addition to wearing her hair curled and loose, the stable hand had frosted the honey brown strands with blond since Samantha had last seen her. On the right woman it would have been becoming, but on Carrie it only looked brassy and pathetically feminine in contrast to her masculine visage.

“Yes, it was a very close call.” Samantha left her stallion to join Carrie at the barrier. “And even though Tucker Coulter is a fabulous vet, Tabasco could still die. I’m praying not, but we’re taking it day by day.”

“Do you have any idea how it happened? I heard—” Carrie broke off and shrugged. “Well, what I heard didn’t make a whole lot of sense. The police said Blue was given morphine and Tabasco arsenic.”

“The police?” Samantha hadn’t been told that the police had been notified. But of course they would have been. Her father had probably called them. Thinking back, she could only wonder why she hadn’t thought to do it herself. Her only excuse was that she’d been so worried about Tabasco that she’d been able to think of little else.

“Yeah, they came out the next morning,” Carrie told
her. “It was kind of creepy, actually. They made all of us feel like criminals.”

Samantha patted Carrie’s hand where it rested atop the gate. “I’m sorry. I’m sure they didn’t intend to make you feel that way.”

“Feel what way?”

Both women turned to look at Kyle, who was walking toward them. “Carrie was just saying that the cops made all of you feel like criminals when they came out to investigate the poisonings.”

“I didn’t feel like a criminal,” Kyle said, drawing to a stop at Carrie’s side. “I think their hunch is absolutely right, that teenagers did it.”

“Teenagers?” Samantha repeated. “What makes them think that?”

“An adult would have done a better job of it,” Kyle replied. “Two different substances, neither in large enough quantity to be deadly. Sounds like kids to me. They took some herbicide from Dad’s gardening supplies and a few morphine tablets from Grandma’s medicine cabinet, being careful not to take so much that anyone would notice.” Kyle shrugged. “It smacks of teenagers out to do mischief.”

Samantha hadn’t considered the possibility. The theory made sense, she supposed. Maybe she’d been totally off base to suspect Steve.

“I’m sure the authorities will do their best to get to the bottom of it,” she finally said. “We just have to make sure it doesn’t happen again. During the day, keep a close eye out for anything suspicious.”

Kyle held up a hand. “We’ve already been through the
drill a dozen times with Jerome and your dad. Examine the feed as we measure it out. Check the hay for any kind of powder, and smell a handful to make sure it hasn’t been sprayed. And above all, yell to high heaven if we see a stranger skulking around the stables.”

Samantha nodded her approval. “Exactly. We’re also locking up tight in the evening and arming the security system. If anyone tries to enter the building or a stall from outside, the siren will go off.”

“It won’t happen again,” Kyle said confidently. He winked at Samantha. “School has started back up. The long, boring days of late August have come to an end, and most kids are busy now at night doing homework, not going out after dark to look for trouble.”

“School has started?” Samantha hadn’t realized so many days had passed. “Labor Day already came and went?”

“Yeah,” Kyle said with a laugh. “And with you gone, none of us got Monday off, let alone the weekend. Hello? Earth to Samantha. It’s Thursday, September seventh.”

Samantha felt awful about depriving all her employees of the holiday off with their families. Even worse, she felt guilty about Tucker, who had worked both days and nights over Labor Day weekend.

She tried to tell herself that it would be just as he had predicted, a debt she would handsomely repay when she wrote out the check to cover his bill. But deep in her heart she knew Tucker hadn’t done it for the money. He’d done it because he cared, not only about Tabasco but about her as well.

“You okay?” Kyle asked.

Samantha jerked and refocused. “Yes. I’m fine. Just very sorry that this mess has been such a burden on all of you.”

Kyle laughed again. “Not a problem. I, for one, kind of like having you in my debt.”

Carrie gazed sadly at Blue, then straightened her shoulders. “I was glad to be here when you most needed me,” she said. Then, glancing at her watch, she added, “I’d better get cracking if I hope to finish up before quitting time.”

Kyle stared after Carrie as she left to resume her work.

“Isn’t she a sight?”

Samantha turned to watch Carrie walk away. “I’m sorry?”

He flapped a hand near his head. “All the goop on her face and now the blond hair. She looks like a linebacker in drag.”

It was a fairly accurate description, and for that reason it galled Samantha all the more to hear it said aloud.

At five o’clock that afternoon, Samantha’s father and eldest brother stopped in to say good-bye. They were headed out for tomorrow’s horse auction at the outskirts of Bend, an annual event on the second Friday of each September that Samantha had totally forgotten. Not only would they sell some of their horses, but they’d also be on the lookout for new mares, a constant necessity in their business.

“I hate to leave you,” her father confessed as he hugged Samantha tight.

“Don’t be silly,” she said, looping both arms around
his neck. “It’s only forty miles away, and you have no choice but to go. A good share of your annual gross comes to you at that auction, and you need some new blood in your stables as well.” She leaned back within the circle of his embrace to grin up at him. “Keep your eyes open for me, too. I’d love to get my hands on a nice black mare.”

“It’s just such a bad time.” Frank pressed his cheek to the top of her head. “With all that’s happened, I hate being gone overnight.”

“I’ll have Jerome,” she reminded him. “And if, by chance, I need you, you’ll only be a half hour away. I’ve got your cell phone number memorized.”

“Mine, too, I hope.”

“Of course, yours,” she said, giving Clint a hug. “Not that I’ll need to call either one of you. Tabasco is on the mend. Tucker will be out tomorrow morning, bright and early, to get another blood sample. Jerome and I will arm the security system before lights-out and be safe as two bugs in a rug.”

“You’ll be stayin’ here with Jerome, then?” her father asked hopefully.

For just an instant Samantha resented the question. She was perfectly capable of spending a night alone in her own house when her father was away on business. But she saw the genuine concern in his eyes, and she swallowed her pride.

“Absolutely. My bedroll is already on his couch. I won’t even be going home to eat. A pot of his famous Blue Buzzard Ranch chili is simmering on the stove.”

“Blue Buzzard chili?” Frank’s eyebrows rose. “Well, hell, that settles it then. I ain’t leavin’.”

Samantha laughed. “Sucks to be you. I’m going to have two heaping bowlfuls and hot corn bread slathered with butter.”

“You’d better have plenty of antacids on hand,” Clint cautioned.

Samantha had not been cursed with a sensitive stomach. She’d loved Jerome’s Blue Buzzard chili since she was knee-high to a tall grasshopper. “I’ll devour it and sleep like a baby after I beat the pants off of him at canasta.”

In truth Samantha planned to fall into an exhaustion-induced coma the moment she went upstairs, but she didn’t think it necessary to tell her father that.

“Well, then,” Frank said, rubbing a hand over his mouth. A twinkle crept into his dark eyes. “After eatin’ two bowls of Blue Buzzard chili, you’ll have a built-in weapon if Steve comes around. You can just breathe on the bastard and knock him flat.”

Samantha was still smiling when she stood outside the stable to wave her father and brother off. Quincy, Parker, and Zach would also be gone for the night. The horse auction was always a family affair. Samantha knew that employees would be on shift around the clock at each of the other ranches, but it was still a lonely feeling, knowing that all her family would be gone until sometime late tomorrow. She rubbed her arms, chilled despite the warmth of the late-summer evening.

As always, Samantha thoroughly relished every bite of Jerome’s famous chili. He guarded the recipe as jealously as a leprechaun a treasure of gold, and she couldn’t rightly blame him. Big, tender chunks of beef, infused with homemade sauce, all but melted on her tongue. Jerome sat beside her at the counter, his elbow almost touching hers.

“I love this stuff,” Samantha finally said to break a silence that didn’t really need to be broken. She turned to regard his face, which had grown a little more wrinkled and ever dearer with each passing year. “One of these days I’m going to hog-tie you and jab you with pins until you give me the recipe.”

“Maybe I’ll leave it to you in my will,” he drawled between slurps.

“Yeah, right. It isn’t written down anywhere.”

“How do you know?”

She sent him a sidelong glance. “Because I looked in your recipe box. You’ll get old and die, and all I’ll have to go on is memory.”

“You went through my recipe box?”

“Yes. Who’s Moony?”

Samantha had come across the name in a letter Jerome had stuffed into the soup section. She’d skimmed only a few lines before she realized it was a love letter and stopped reading.

“You little whippersnapper.” His eyebrows slowly arched. “You got no business snooping in my recipe box.”

Samantha struggled not to smile. “I wasn’t snooping, Jerome. I was looking for your chili recipe.” She lost the
battle and grinned broadly. “I never expected to find a love letter tucked behind a split-pea-soup recipe.”

“I don’t have a recipe for split-pea soup. I hate the stuff.”

“Oh. Well.” Samantha frowned. “Must have been a bean recipe then. The point remains. I never expected to come across anything personal.”

“My point stands, too. You got no business poking through my recipe box.”

“True,” she conceded. “I just couldn’t help myself, that’s all. It’s what you get for having such a good recipe and keeping the ingredients a secret.”

“You start with prime chunks of beef,” he said, leading her to believe that he finally meant to give her the details. “Then you marinate it for several hours in two cups of nosiness.”

Samantha almost fell off the bar stool from laughing. Jerome nearly helped her on her way with a jab of his elbow. “You stay out of my personal effects, young lady. You’re liable to get an education.”

She pressed a palm to her forehead. “Lands, don’t shock me. I am, after all, still innocent as a babe and wet behind the ears.”

Jerome’s weathered face went suddenly solemn. “That you are, darlin’, and just don’t know it.”

Samantha’s mirth faded as quickly as his had. A quick flash went through her mind of Steve dragging her to the bedroom by the hair of her head. “Trust me, Jerome, I kissed innocence good-bye long ago.”

As a general rule, everything in Samantha’s stables ran as punctually as a Swiss watch. At ten every night, the horses got their last bit of nourishment for the day, three cups of wet cob.

In all the years Jerome had worked for her, he’d never once complained about the extra hour of work that this particular foible of Samantha’s caused him. She suspected it was because Jerome settled back with a bowl of ice cream before he went to bed every night, and he figured the horses deserved the same.

At precisely ten o’clock they went downstairs and began to make the rounds, dividing the stalls equally between them. Samantha was pleased to note that her foreman took as long with each horse as she did.

Samantha couldn’t help herself. She particularly loved Blue Blazes, so she began her half of the stable at the rear for once, giving him his measure of wet cob first. She checked every grain, the memory of her last night with him still fresh in her mind. The mixture of ground cob was dark and pure. She even ate some herself to be certain. Nothing but sweetness melted over her tongue.