Page 41 of The Last Dance You Saved
“Ironing all the linens for the wedding,” Fallon said.
Lauren had spent hours in the seat of the tractor, baling alfalfa, gone straight out to check the cattle in the far field, and now, instead of showering and resting for the evening, she was starting an entirely different job. Sadie had been right. She was doing all of Spence’s jobs on top of her own. As if reading my mind, Fallon shifted uncomfortably. “I asked if she wanted me to do it, and she told me she had it covered.”
“Where’s Sadie?” I asked.
“Helping Mom.”
I didn’t know why that pissed me off. Because I didn’t want a woman I didn’t trust ingratiating herself into my family? Because it should be Lauren’s family helping? Or because I simply didn’t want Sadie working her fingers to the bone in a place that had easily tossed me away and never looked back?
“We’ll all go,” I said.
Fallon snorted. “You’ll never get Mom to come. She’s either working or sleeping.”
My chest burned because I heard in those words what she wasn’t saying—her mother didn’t make time for her. I hadn’t made time for her either. I couldn’t go back in time and change it, but I could at least give her something while I was here.
I left Adam and the desk and the questions behind, striding toward the door.
“We’ll see what I can do about that. Where are they?” I asked.
Fallon looked shocked by my acquiescence, but she threw a thumb toward the back of the house. “The old housekeeper’s quarters.”
“Order the pizza,” I said, heading toward the back and then stopping. “Are you getting it from Jack’s?” When she nodded, I said, “Get me a meatball sub, no cheese.”
“No cheese?” Maisey gasped as if it was a sin, and it made my lips quirk.
“Dad is such a weirdo. He’ll only eat cheese if it isn’t melted or mixed into other things. He says it’s too slimy otherwise.”
As I started toward the back hallway, memories of another girl gasping at my dislike of cheese, and both her and Spence trying to change my mind as we ordered food at Jack’s, flashed before my eyes. Suzanne Perk had been shoved in one side of a dingy booth with me while Spence and Lauren had been on the other. I’d been only a year older than Fallon at the time, maybe a year before Spence had graduated. A year before he’d broken up with Lauren. Even then, I’d envied them. The ease with which they touched each other, sat together, talked together.
Looking back, I realized I hadn’t wanted Lauren as much as I’d wanted what they had. And even when I’d been with her for a few short months, it hadn’t been the same as it had ever been with them. But I’d held on tight to her, thinking I’d finally gotten what I’d always wanted, when really, I’d simply been her stand-in for Spence. And like always, to the people here, I’d ended up being a disappointment.
Just like I’d always be a poor stand-in for Spence in my daughter’s eyes. But I was here now, and he wasn’t, so I’d do my damnedest to not disappoint her more than I had to. I’d figure out how to be someone she could count on, even if I’d never be what she really wanted. Even if being that person meant making the hard decision of selling the ranch. I wasn’t going to be sentimental about it. If it would never sustain itself, it had to go.
I stopped and looked back toward the entryway where Fallon and Maisey were still standing. “We’ll take the food with us to the lake, so pack a cooler with drinks.”
My daughter’s face lit up, and that right there was enough to know I’d made the right decision—at least for tonight.
Chapter Fifteen
Sadie
THE FEELS
Performed by Maren Morris
After Fallon and I had finishedwith the horses, I’d helped her clean out the chicken house and fill the cattle troughs, then I’d come back to the house to shower. I’d changed into a long pair of shorts that hid my scars and a tank top before finding Adam in the office.
I’d answered as many questions for him as I could about the ranch, gotten some answers for him from Ryder, and then asked what he’d found out about the jewels. He’d said he hadn’t had time to dig into anything more, which seemed off somehow. It felt strange that, at the moment they needed money the most, he’d put it off. But he’d promised he was going to spend the rest of the afternoon looking for anything he could find in the stacks of old paperwork.
When I’d asked where Lauren was at, he’d directed me to the old servant quarters at the back of the house beyond the kitchen. And when I’d found her hard at work once again, I’d offered to help. She’d shrugged and simply shown me how to fold the napkins she was ironing into roses that would be placed on each plate for the wedding on Saturday. We were never that fancy at Hatley Ranch. We used cloth, as it was more environmentally sound, but we just folded them into thirds and stuck them in wicker baskets on the tables. Down home. Picnic-like almost.
At first, I was quiet, concentrating on what I was doing, but once I got the hang of it, I tried to start up another conversation, asking her more questions about the upcoming wedding. But for the first time, Lauren seemed reluctant to talk to me, answering in one or two words. It took me several minutes to realize her shortness had nothing to do with not wanting to talk to me and much more to do with whatever she’d taken—tranquilizers, pain pills, something.
The woman I’d seen for the first two days, the one who’d been constantly on the go, full of energy and ideas and passion for the ranch, had disappeared. Now she seemed utterly defeated. Her motions were slow and methodical, almost as if she was having to concentrate extra hard on setting the iron down in all the right places.
I felt Rafe before I even realized he’d found us. The intensity of his look vibrated through me as he leaned up against the doorframe. His wet hair glimmered. The warm strands which had already been a shade lighter than his beard, had been spun with hundreds of bronze-and-gold highlights after just a single afternoon in the sun. He’d changed into another pair of jeans and a gray T-shirt that stretched tight across corded muscles, but his feet were clad only in socks. It felt strangely intimate to see him this way. At home. Relaxed.
No. Scratch that.
