I laid her down in the warm sand, covering her as much as I could with the top layer until Ash reached me. “What happened?” he asked, concern evident on his face.
“She got mad and took a step too far. We need to warm her up quickly.”
Ash searched around in Dawn’s pocket and came up with a key. “Take her in her truck. It will stay warmer. I’ll drive yours back to the ranch.”
“I’m fine,” she said, her teeth chattering. “I wasn’t in the water that long.”
I scooped her up and into me again, the sand covering both of us in our wet clothes, but I couldn’t think about anything but warming her up. “You will be fine once I get you home and into a warm bed.”
I followed Ash toward the wooden walkway with her holding onto my neck tightly. “I’ll let Ma know that we’re headed back,” he said over his shoulder. “What do you need from her?”
“Time,” I said, gazing down into Dawn’s face. “Time and understanding.”
When we reached the trucks, Ash helped me get Dawn inside and wrapped her in an old blanket I found behind the seat. “We understand, Beau,” he assured me, his hand on my shoulder. “I know you think we don’t, but we do. We always have, son. You don’t go through the things you went through and not have it change who you are at your very core. The thing is, you get to decide how it changed you. It can make you the man you were last night. The man who stepped up and made sure his brother’s wedding went off without a hitch, and the man who helped keep everyone safe by patching the fence. You can continue to be changed by the past in a positive way. After all, I think that’s what Samantha would have wanted the most.” He gave me a hug, his clothes getting wet and sandy, but he didn’t seem to care. “I’m going to take the truck back to Bison Ridge. You take Dawn to Heavenly Lane and let us know if you need anything. We love you, Beau. Always have, always will. Don’t lose sight of that when all you can see and hear are the words of that letter.”
I hugged him again in understanding and gratefulness before I climbed into the truck. I turned the engine over and flipped the heat to high. Dawn was shivering next to me, but the color was back in her cheeks, and her lips weren’t blue. I noticed a pile of clothing on the floor and couldn’t bite back the smile.
“They were making me colder,” she said, her hands holding the blanket around herself tightly. “Don’t worry. I’m still wearing my underwear.”
“I wasn’t worried one way or the other,” I said, backing out and following Ash out of the parking area. “I’m just glad you’re okay. I’m so sorry, Dawn. I shouldn’t have put you at risk like that. Do you understand what I meant when I said I could hurt you without even trying?”
“No,” she said, letting go of the blanket to grasp my shoulder. “I didn’t fall on accident, Beau.”
“What?” I asked, completely confused. “It wasn’t on purpose. You fell into the lake because you were trying to get to me.”
Her head swung back and forth. “No, I went under the water on purpose. I could touch the bottom. I wasn’t in danger, but I was proving a point.”
I growled, my heart still thudding double time from the adrenaline of her being in danger. “You could have died. As it is, your joints are going to hurt for days.”
“It will be worth it because I made my point.”
“Did you? Because I still don’t know what it was.”
“The moment you thought I was in danger, you reacted. You risked your own life to make sure I was safe. You took charge, ordered Ash around, warmed me the only way you could, and protected me. You are not the kind of man who is going to hurt me. You’re the kind of man who is going to protect, heal, and love me. Ash and the rest of the family see that in everything you do. Somewhere deep down, you know that’s true.”
“I don’t know what to think,” I admitted, my eyes focused on the road in front of me. “Everything inside me is spinning around like the waves of Lake Superior.”
Dawn squeezed my shoulder gently while she nodded. “I know, and no one expects you to get that kind of news and then know how to feel about it immediately. Let us help you through it, Beau. Trust the people you’ve made your family, please. I love you, Beau. I can’t lose you now.”
Her hand fell to the truck seat, and I rubbed it for a moment. “When I was out there in the water, I heard a voice. I know it was momma from wherever she is now. She said instead of walking away, you walked in. She told me to think about that. Instead of walking away, you wa—walked in.” I cleared my throat to keep it from cracking.
“I always will, Beau. You mean that much to me. Whether we stay lovers or go back to being friends, I will always walk in.”
“I love you, Dawn. I love you for always walking in.”
She brushed a kiss across my knuckles before releasing my hand. “And I love you for running to me when I need you. As long as we keep running to each other instead of away, we’re going to be just fine.”
I rode along the fence line on Bison Ridge, checking the pastures for the promised red dogs that had begun to arrive over the last two weeks. Sure enough, a few tiny, and by tiny, I mean seventy-pound animals, stood dwarfed by their mothers in the pasture. There weren’t many yet, but that would change quickly. Bison have their babies from April through June, and we were only in the early weeks of May. There would be many more to come.
Life had calmed down in some ways since Heaven’s wedding. Ash and Amity had stayed a few extra days with Beau before they flew back to Dublin to put their business in order. When they returned with the RV, they parked it behind the barracks at Heavenly Lane. Sure, they could have parked on Bison Ridge property, but Amity and Ash had plans to participate in dude ranch activities, so it made sense for them to be closer to our ranch than Blaze’s. Secretly, they wanted to give Blaze and Heaven time to be newlyweds and be closer to Beau, who needed them a whole lot more than Blaze did right now.
Since that day at the lake, Beau had calmed down considerably. He was still shaken by the news, especially once he found the obituary online for the man who sent him the letter. He had passed before Amity and Ash had arrived in Wisconsin. Now, Beau couldn’t prove that Travis was his father or that he’d killed his mother. He struggled with it as much as he had struggled with not knowing who had killed her over the last twenty years. I was confident Beau would find his way through it, though. Instead of running away from me, he was running to me, just like he promised. Even if Beau was angry, he didn’t try to destroy the life he’d built for himself since he was a boy. Over the last few weeks, he had gone back to his leatherwork, started new projects to improve Bison Ridge fencing, and was living in what was now his new normal.
I guess you could say I was doing the same. As the weather warmed up, my joints didn’t hurt quite as much. Then again, that could be from being on consistent medication. It could also be because I had someone who loved me looking after me now. Beau was always mindful of my joints and never pushed me to do more than I could. Usually, he was the one telling me I had to take it easy after a long day. He was never wrong, but I was slowly learning how to do that.
Last weekend, I had my first group of women come to stay at Heavenly Lane. They were there for a work retreat to brainstorm new ideas, do some team-building activities, and enjoy the fun at the ranch, like horseback riding and campfires every night. They had a blast and promised to tell their friends about us. I already had every weekend in June and July booked, and honestly, I could see that if I had a second bunkhouse, I could book bigger groups for a week instead of just a weekend.
I planned to discuss it with Heaven and Tex at our next board meeting. If we started work on it this summer, it would be ready for next summer. The house limited the number of women we could have in the groups and required me to be on call every second of the weekend. At least if they were in a separate bunkhouse, everyone had time to themselves. The women’s retreats added extra work to my already full plate, so I could see that we’d quickly be hiring Landry to work full-time. The ranches were growing, and no one would be happier about that than Duane Lane. His legacy was alive and well, even if that legacy looked just a little bit different than he’d planned.