“That’s not being grouchy.”
“It isn’t?”
“No. It’s being justifiably upset.” He relented and chuckled. “I don’t mean to be grouchy, darlin’. The next time I start grumping at you, remind me, and I’ll be so sweet your teeth will ache.”
Loni laughed again. “I’ll settle for reasonable. I was only petting the babies.”
“Foals. You’re going to be a rancher’s wife. You have to learn the lingo.”
“Foals, then. To me they’re babies. I don’t see the big difference.”
He shook his head, his dark eyes twinkling. “I can tell right now that you’re going to take some work.”
“I’m a fast learner. That little guy who was trying to eat my slacks—what’s his name?”
“Glutton.”
She almost choked on a berry. “I thought everyone had a biblical name.”
“Gluttony is mentioned in the Bible. As a nickname, it’ll do for now. I like to think on it for a while before coming up with official names for the quarter-horse registry. I’m sure there’s a character in scripture who always worried about where his next meal would come from. I’ll probably name Glutton after him.”
“Hmm. I’ll keep that in mind. Maybe I’ll come up with something.”
“See there?” He offered her a grape from his bowl. “You’re already acting like a rancher’s wife.”
Loni accompanied Clint to the stables while he did morning chores. When she grabbed a pitchfork to help him and Hooter clean stalls, he protested.
“You don’t have to do that, honey. Hooter and I’ve got it covered.” He glanced at his watch. “Reinforcements will be rolling in soon. I keep a full crew on weekdays. My wife won’t be needed or expected to do any dirty work.”
Loni pitched some hay from Uriah’s stall out into the paddock, where someone would soon collect it with a small tractor equipped with a forked shovel. “I want to learn,” she protested. “That way if you ever do need my help, I’ll know what to do.”
Uriah, who’d been left to wander loose in the arena while his stall was cleaned, snorted and bobbed his head.
“See?” Loni said with a laugh. “Uriah votes in my favor. I may never do any of this stuff on a regular basis, but being familiar with all the chores surely can’t hurt.”
Clint leaned across the gate to give her a quick kiss. “I love you. Have I mentioned that yet this morning?”
He’d told her in a dozen different ways. “No,” she lied with a grin.
“I love you, lady. More than you’ll ever know.”
“Back to work!” Hooter hollered from across the arena, looking like the very epitome of an Old West movie character in his battered Stetson, red suspenders, shortened jeans, and scuffed boots. The improbable protrusions of his handlebar mustache at each side of his craggy face only added to the effect. “You young pups are makin’ my ears burn.”
Clint winked at Loni. “As soon as we’re married I’ll make love to you in the hayloft,” he whispered. “After-hours, of course, so we’ll have some privacy. Once Hooter goes up to his apartment, nothing but horse noises wakes him.”
She wrinkled her nose. “Isn’t hay prickly?”
He grinned devilishly. “If you notice the prickles, darlin’, I won’t be doing my job.”
Loni resumed forking soiled clumps of hay from Uriah’s stall. In what seemed like no time at all her palms started to sting, and when she looked down she saw that the soft flesh at the base of her fingers was turning red. Blisters. Or what soon would be blisters. She set the fork aside to exit the stall.
“Clint? Do you have any spare gloves?” she called.
“There she is!” a man shouted.
For a moment Loni blinked in stunned amazement as cameras began flashing all around her. What? That was the only thought her startled mind could formulate as reporters scurried forth from hiding places like ants from under mopboards. She threw up her arm to shield her eyes from the flare of bright lights, only dimly aware of Uriah whinnying behind her, then of Hooter dashing across the arena toward her.
A microphone was shoved in her face. “Ms. MacEwen, how did it feel to save Senator Stiles’s son’s life?”
“How does your clairvoyance work?” someone else shouted. “Did you need an article of the boy’s clothing to home in on his whereabouts?”
Loni couldn’t see, couldn’t think. The lights. Her vision was obliterated by white spots. But the questions kept coming like bullets fired from guns and hitting her from all directions. She heard Clint shout something. The next instant something struck Loni full-length and sent her tumbling to the ground. She hit the dirt with such force, all the breath was knocked from her lungs. In the dizzying swirl of dust and voices raised in anger, she heard a high-pitched scream, followed by Clint crying, “Sweet Jesus, no!”
Rolling onto her side, Loni fought as frantically for breath as she did to clear her vision. Uriah. As the spots before her eyes faded, she saw the horse rearing high above her, his front hooves slashing the air in a panicked assault. Clint had hold of the horse’s halter and with the swing of his weight was trying to gain control, but the suddenness of the reporters’ ambush had frightened the gelding beyond reason.
For an instant Loni thought Clint was trying to protect her from Uriah’s hooves. Only then did she see Hooter lying a few feet away, and remembered seeing him run toward her. It hit her then, like a cruel fist to her heart, that Hooter had thrown her out of harm’s way and taken the brunt of the frantic horse’s hooves in her stead.
“No!” she screamed. Crawling toward Hooter’s still form, she sobbed and cried again, “No, no, no!”
Hooter’s old hat had been knocked from his head, and blood pooled crimson over a deep gash on his scalp. Even in her panic Loni tried to feel for a pulse, but her hand was shaking so badly she couldn’t tell whether the foreman was dead or merely unconscious. Clint was still struggling to control Uriah.
Rage mushroomed within Loni. She pushed to her feet, fury glazing her vision with red. “You bastards!” she yelled. “Just look what you’ve done. You’ve got your damned story now! This is how it feels to be a clairvoyant. Get out! You’re all idiots! Any fool knows not to flash lights and start shouting around horses. Get out! You’ve killed my friend. Put that in your story, damn you!”
The reporters, male and female alike, retreated as if a sudden force field were shoving them back. Loni stared at the blur of white faces. The cameras had stopped flashing now. Except for Uriah’s shrill screams and the frightened whinnying of other horses, the arena had gone deathly quiet. Loni swallowed, knotted her hands, and advanced a step on her tormentors.
“I said get out. I mean now.”
The reporters ran as if all the hounds of hell were nipping at their heels. Loni raced for one of the phones stationed around the arena. With trembling hands she dialed 911 and asked for an ambulance to be sent out ASAP.
Uriah was still trembling when Loni ended the call, but the gelding was no longer kicking up a fuss. Clint was bent over Hooter, feeling for a pulse. Loni dropped to her knees beside him.
“I’m so sorry. I’m so sorry.” Tears, hot and burning, filled her eyes and seared her throat. “Oh, Clint, this is my fault. My fault.”
“I need some towels.” He jabbed a thumb toward the rear of the arena. “The supply room. Hurry.”
He began stripping off his shirt as Loni raced to do his bidding. Hooter. A half-dozen memories of the funny, older man spun through Loni’s mind. Clint loved Hooter. What if the foreman died?
Loni would never forgive herself if that happened. Not for as long as she lived.
Chapter Sixteen
Once again Loni found herself in the ER waiting room, surrounded by members of Clint’s family. Clint was with Hooter, wherever that might be. The old foreman had still been alive when the ambulance brought him in, but the head injury was serious, and so far Loni and the others had received no updates.
Frank rested a co
mforting hand on Loni’s knee. “He’s a tough old fart, honey. He’s goin’ to be okay.”
“Hell, yes,” Quincy seconded. “Hooter’s survived worse than this. Remember the time he forgot to shift the tractor out of gear, climbed off to do something, and got run over?”
The family spent a moment reminiscing about that event. Then Samantha said, “Quit blaming yourself, Loni. It’s not your fault that a bunch of idiotic reporters sneaked into the stable and spooked Uriah.”
Loni’s throat felt as if a steel band were tightening around it. “Hooter pushed me out of the way. He saved me and took the punishment himself.”
Frank patted her knee. “Damn straight. He wouldn’t be worth the powder it’d take to blow him to hell if he’d done otherwise.”
“You had your back to the horse,” Parker inserted.
“You didn’t know you were in danger,” Zach added. “Folks watch out for one another on a ranch. Hooter did what any of us—including you—would have done. He probably meant to get out of the way himself and tripped or something.”
Loni appreciated their attempts to make her feel better, she truly did, but the truth of the matter was inescapable: Hooter would never have been hurt if not for her. The reporters wouldn’t have sneaked into the stable. They wouldn’t have flashed cameras and shouted questions. Uriah was a wonderful, gentle horse that would never hurt Hooter or anyone else under normal circumstances.
Loni had been the fly in the ointment. The knowledge ached in her chest like a huge boil that was about to erupt.
When Clint finally emerged from the ER, his dark face still looked ashen. He had his shirt back on, the front smeared with Hooter’s blood. At their questions he just shook his head. “They’re working on him. That’s all I know. It got so busy, with so many people in there, they booted me out. Now all we can do is wait.”
And wait they did, talking little, each lost in his own thoughts. Occasionally one of the Harrigan males rose to pace. Samantha crossed and uncrossed her legs and swung her foot. Loni just huddled on the chair, feeling numb on the outside but hurting on the inside.
What if Trevor had been in the stable when Uriah went nuts? Someday soon the child would visit his father at the ranch. What if it were Clint’s son who was in the ER right now, possibly dying? One by one, other horrible possibilities circled through Loni’s mind. She loved Clint so very much, and the last thing she wanted was to leave him. But she couldn’t bear the thought of this ever happening again.
When the waiting became unbearable, Frank suggested that they all go up to the pediatric wing to visit Trevor. “It’ll take our mind off our worries,” he said. “We can tell the gal at the desk where we’ll be so they can get word to us of Hooter’s condition.”
Everyone welcomed the idea, and Loni soon found herself hunched, arm-to-arm between Zach Harrigan and Tucker Coulter as the entire family jostled to fit inside the elevator. Moments later they were in the waiting area just down the hall from Trevor’s room. The head ward nurse once again requested that only one person go in at a time, limiting each visit to ten minutes, spaced a quarter hour apart this time. Again, only Clint was allowed to stay in the child’s room.
Loni excused herself and went to the ladies’ room. Once in a stall with the door locked, she called her sister.
Deirdre answered on the second ring. “You all right?”
Loni couldn’t think what to say. Finally she managed a muffled, “Mm.” Then she took a deep breath and whispered, “I need you to come get me. I’m at the hospital. Meet me in the main lobby in, say, thirty minutes?”
“You’re leaving,” Deirdre said. It wasn’t a question.
“I’ll explain when I see you,” Loni said tightly. But then, giving way to tears, she blurted out the whole, terrible story. “Hooter may die, Deirdre.” She held a knotted hand to her heart. “It never would have happened if not for me. I feel so…awful. I’m poison. Don’t you see? All the interest in me may die down for a while, but then another kid will go missing and it’ll happen all over again. I don’t have a choice. I have to leave.”
“Oh, sweetie. Have you told Clint how you feel?”
“No, and I won’t. He’ll be gallant. He won’t let me go. Just meet me in the lobby. All right? I need you, Deirdre. Don’t let me down.”
After ending the call, Loni bathed her face in cold water. She tried to do something with her hair. Impossible. She finally decided she probably looked no worse than she had fifteen minutes ago. Maybe no one would notice her red eyes and nose.
To her relief Frank was on the phone when she returned to the waiting room, Samantha was in seeing Trevor, and all the younger men were gathered around the television, watching a rodeo competition. No one bothered to look at her, let alone study her face.
When it came Loni’s turn to go see Trevor, she found father and son once again playing tic-tac-toe. She could only marvel at Clint’s acting ability, for she knew how worried he was about Hooter. But he seemed to be having a good time. He also appeared to be losing again.
Loni played one game with the child. That was all her ten minutes allowed for. She kept a bright smile on her face and avoided Clint’s gaze as much as possible, afraid he might see the anguish in her eyes. Nothing, absolutely nothing, should be allowed to interfere with Clint’s happy future with his son. The pair had already lost eight years. When Trevor finally came to live with his dad, the ranch should be a peaceful, safe place for him to grow up, not a three-ring circus with crazy newspeople flashing cameras and frightening the horses.
A hard knot of regret lodged at the base of Loni’s throat, but she struggled not to let the turmoil of her feelings show on her face. It helped that Clint knew she was concerned about Hooter. If he noticed that she seemed sad, he evidently laid it off on that.
When her time was up, Loni said, “I think I’d better go now.”
Clint glanced up from the game in progress. “Wait for me downstairs?”
She couldn’t bring herself to lie to this man, so she settled for smiling and kissing his lean cheek. “Later, alligator.”
Deirdre was waiting for Loni in the main lobby. When she saw Loni walking toward her, she jumped up from the overstuffed chair she’d been sitting in and hurried across the carpeted lounge area. Her face was pinched, and her short dark hair looked as if she’d been caught in a high wind.
Deirdre slapped a newspaper into Loni’s hands. “This is a disaster. It’s even worse than I thought. You’re front-page news!”
Loni unfolded the newspaper. The bold front-page headline read: PSYCHIC HELPS FIND SENATOR’S MISSING CHILD. She wasn’t really surprised, but her legs went a little watery all the same. She stared at the grainy photo of her face, then at the small print wrapped around the frame.
“Sharon Michaels did quite a number on you. Mom says you’re on the front page in Lynwood, too. Evidently the Portland media somehow got wind of the Cheryl Blain case, and they’ve unearthed all of that again to spice up a story that’s already huge.”
“I know.” Loni told her sister about the man who’d been offering her a book deal. “But we mustn’t blame Sharon Michaels. She had no idea her being open with the press might cause me harm.”
Deirdre clasped her arm. “It gets worse. I don’t know how to tell you.”
“Tell me what?”
“They’re camped outside your house. Reporters everywhere. You can’t go home to get any clothes or anything else. Michael thinks we need to get you the hell out of town.”
Loni had already reached that conclusion herself, and though the thought broke her heart, she knew she would never be coming back.
“Michael drove over to your place in a friend’s car to get some of your clothes and personal stuff. That way they can’t trace the license plate number to us, and it’ll hold them off from our house for at least a little while. But they’ll make the connection soon. The media are experts at rooting people out of their hidey-holes. They’ve got your full name. It’s only a matt
er of time before they’ll have all the details on your family history.”
Loni thought of Clint upstairs with his sweet little boy, and her heart squeezed with such pain it was almost unbearable. Though she knew that Clint loved her and wanted to be with her, she also understood that he had no idea how disruptive a connection to her would continue to be. He was only just now establishing a relationship with his child. She couldn’t bring something like this into his life on an ongoing basis when he needed to be focusing on his relationship with his son.
“It sounds as if you and Michael are already making decisions,” she mused aloud to her sister.
“Yes. First we’ll go to my place. Then…” Deirdre shrugged and shook her head. “We’ll have a conference call with Mom and Dad, I guess. Maybe if we put our heads together we can come up with a plan.”
Four hours later Loni sat at Deirdre’s kitchen table with a red wig on her head, a cup of tea between her hands, and a lavender candle burning near her elbow, the scent of which, according to her sister, was guaranteed to settle her nerves.
“I hate red hair.”
Deirdre fussed with the curls, arranging them around Loni’s face. “As soon as you cross the Idaho border, you can take it off. Besides, it’s more of a strawberry blond.”
“Where on earth did you get it, and why?”
“I got it at a garage sale for a Halloween party last year. I was Endora. Remember her, Samantha’s mother in Bewitched?”
Michael came in from the garage. “I’ve got the rental car loaded up.” He glanced at his watch. “You and Hannah need to be heading out pretty soon if you want to meet Gram at Haley’s Junction by midnight.”
Without a word Loni went to the guest bathroom to use the toilet. It was a shock seeing herself in the mirror. A cloud of red Bozo curls surrounded her head and spilled in all their radiant glory to her shoulders. Tears filled her eyes. She would never forget how Clint had liked touching her hair. He would hate how she looked now. Only temporary. Deirdre insisted the disguise was necessary, and Loni wasn’t about to test the theory. All she wanted was to reach the Idaho border and put this insanity behind her.