Carter

  The last time Carter had seen Lizzie, she’d driven up to the front door of the ranch and handed him the bundle that contained Faith. While Carter had stared at the baby, dumbfounded, Lizzie had leapt back into a car and driven rapidly away. Carter had never seen her again.

  “Daddy?”

  Carter realized he was gripping Faith tight, holding her as he had that night, when his heart had pounded with confusion, fear, and a strange and almost violent protectiveness.

  “Daddy, why did she do that?”

  Carter dragged in a breath. He was furious enough to go after Lizzie and strangle her with his bare hands, but Grace might be dying, even as he stood here. He had to see Grace.

  “I’ve got to get to the hospital. Baby, how’d you like to stay with Ross and the sheriff? They’ll take you to find Grandma.” He glanced at Ross as he spoke, who nodded.

  “I’m going with you,” Faith said.

  “No, honey. I’ve gotta—”

  “I said, I’m going with you.” Faith glared at him with hard eyes so like his own. “I love Grace too.”

  Ross waited, silently, for Carter to decide. Little brother wasn’t going to butt in with advice, or help.

  “All right,” Carter conceded. “Come on.” Faith looked triumphant as Carter set her down and took her hand to lead her out.

  Carter was shaking as he walked, his gut clenched. Only Faith’s touch kept him steady as they made their way up the hill to the truck.

  Ross followed. “We’ve already put an APB out on Lizzie,” he said. “We’ll find her.”

  Ross had been young himself, about fourteen, when Faith had come to live with them. The rest of the Campbell family had seriously doubted Carter could take care of a baby, and were gently talking about adoption, but Ross had stuck by Carter’s decision to keep her. Carter had taken care of Ross just fine, Ross declared, and he’d been a hell of a lot more trouble than a baby girl could ever be.

  “Thanks,” Carter said to him. Ross had always been there for Carter, even when Carter had first arrived, a truly messed-up thirteen-year-old, hostile to everyone. Ross, ten and innocent, had aroused Carter’s protectiveness.

  Ross gave him a tight look from Campbell blue eyes and let him go.

  ***

  River County’s hospital lay at a crossroads well outside of town, and served several communities in the area. Carter had been here too often, he and his brothers being raced to the clinic after every bad fall.

  Carter was familiar with the open reception area, the soft chime of the paging system, the antiseptic smells, the feeling of worry, fearful hope, and despair that permeated the dull, white walls. People came here to be born, to be patched up at various stages of their lives, and to die.

  He didn’t need to ask where Grace had been taken. He knew. Carter was in the elevator, Faith in his arms, before anyone could stop him.

  He found the Malorys in the waiting area where patients were rushed to emergency surgery. They turned as he walked in, Ray and Kyle, and surprisingly, Lucy. Lucy lived in Houston now, but she visited home often—must have been here when they got the news. Grace’s mom wasn’t there yet—the Malorys’ father had passed about fifteen years back, and Grace’s mom lived in Austin with a man the Malorys liked, but he wasn’t a rancher. Kyle and Ray had taken over the business.

  All this went through the back part of Carter’s brain. The front part saw Ray and Kyle worried as hell, Lucy’s eyes red and wet.

  “How is she?” Carter asked.

  Ray came to them and answered. “She’s in surgery. We’ll know—sometime.”

  “Shit.” Carter lowered Faith to her feet. Faith went straight to Lucy and opened her arms. Lucy leaned down and hugged her.

  Kyle came over to face Carter. “What the hell happened? Your ex did this? Why? What did she have to do with Grace?”

  Kyle was in a tearing fury, and Carter saw square in his eyes that he blamed Carter. That was okay; he blamed himself too.

  “I don’t know,” Carter said. “I wasn’t there. No one was.”

  Faith patted Lucy on the shoulder and turned around. “Uncle Ross says the men at the ranch heard the gunshots and called the police. They saw a woman running away, and when they got to the kitchen, found Grace. Grace told them my mom had done it. Uncle Ross sent the ambulance and police, and then came to the school and got me.”

  Carter dimly remembered Faith trying to explain all this as he’d driven, but it hadn’t registered. Only the idea that Grace might be dead by the time he got there had beaten through his brain.

  Kyle didn’t move. “So Grace was hurt because she was working at your house when this woman came looking for you. She got shot because she was there.”

  Carter said nothing. That was exactly what had happened—if Grace had been out, or at her own home, anywhere but Circle C, she’d have been fine and well.

  “I knew damn well I shouldn’t have let Grant talk me into letting her work there,” Kyle said. “Trust the Campbells to fuck everything up.”

  “Stop it,” Lucy said. “You didn’t let her do anything, Kyle. Grace made her own choice.”

  Lucy’s mouth said that, but Carter saw in her green eyes that she partly agreed with Kyle. Grace wouldn’t have been hurt if she’d stayed the hell away from Circle C Ranch, and Carter in particular.

  Ray got in front of Kyle, easing his belligerent little brother away from Carter. Ray was a big man, a champion bull rider, and though Kyle rarely backed down from him, he set his face and turned away.

  “It’s not Carter’s fault,” Ray said. “It’s the fault of a crazy bitch with a gun. Grace is so trusting, she probably flung the door wide open for her. If I ever put my hands on Lizzie, I’m killing her.”

  Carter had the feeling he should thank Ray, but his lips were numb, and he couldn’t speak.

  “Still,” Ray said. “I think you’d better go, Carter. They’re not going to let anyone but family in for a while. My mom’s on her way—I can’t guarantee she won’t be mad at you at first too.”

  Carter knew he was absolutely right. This had become none of his business. Grace was a Malory, and the Malorys would take care of her. The fact that Carter had fallen madly in love with Grace had nothing to do with it.

  “Yeah,” Carter said. “I’m going. But you let me know, all right?”

  He spoke to Ray alone, as Kyle and Lucy wouldn’t even look at him. Ray gave him a brief nod.

  Carter was faintly surprised it was Ray who was so understanding—Ray had been hurt by Christina, now Grant’s wife, a little bit ago, when Christina had made her choice. But Ray had always been the stoic one, while Kyle was the firework.

  Carter felt Faith’s small hand in his big one. “Come on, Daddy. Can we buy Grace a big bunch of flowers?”

  He looked down to see Faith gazing up at him in perfect comprehension. His little girl had always been so much smarter than him.

  “Sure, baby. Let’s go.”

  They walked out together, with no good-byes from the family.

  Carter made it as far as the waiting room outside the emergency area, in the hall that led to the regular wards. He sat down suddenly in a cushioned plastic chair.

  “Daddy?” Faith climbed onto the chair beside him, still holding his hand.

  “I can’t leave,” Carter said. “Not until I find out if she’s gonna be okay.”

  Faith patted his knee. “I understand.” She looked around. “This is a good place to wait. How about we get ourselves some sodas and settle in here?”

  Carter leaned down and gave his daughter a rough hug and kiss. “Love you, baby,” he said, his throat aching.

  “Love you too, Daddy.”

  Chapter Three

  Carter woke from a doze much later to find Ross and Tyler sitting on either side of him. On the opposite side of the hall, his adoptive mother, Olivia, reposed with her legs up across the chairs, Faith sleeping on her lap.

  Ross was in his uniform, gun in its holster on his heavy belt. R
oss didn’t have the height of the oldest brothers, Adam and Grant, but he was solidly built, strong and agile, his dark hair buzzed against his head. A far cry today from the small, vulnerable kid tagging after his brothers fourteen years ago, trying to take their teasing in his stride. Carter had stepped in to be his champion.

  Now Ross was giving him a look of deep sympathy. He didn’t offer platitudes; he simply let Carter know, in silence, that he was there for him.

  “Did you find her?” Carter demanded.

  Ross knew he meant Lizzie. He shook his head. “She’s not in Riverbend, not even in River County. We’ve spread the search to surrounding counties and towns, and we’ve got word out in Austin and San Antonio. We’ll find her.”

  Carter wasn’t so sure. Lizzie had the gift for disappearing. Carter had wasted time and money looking for Lizzie when she’d first dumped Faith on Carter.

  “Hang in there, bro,” Tyler said.

  Tyler was the brother Carter had the least ease relating to—Tyler had short, intense relationships, never settling down, shrugging it off when he broke up with a woman. Carter knew why Tyler had decided to live like that, but he couldn’t entirely agree with his choices.

  Carter himself had had plenty of brief sexual liaisons, but they never left him happy. He felt little when he ended it, finishing up as numb as when he’d started. Maybe because he’d been so burned by Lizzie, maybe because he just hadn’t connected with the right woman, but when he was done with a relationship, it was as though it had never happened.

  The right woman lay down the hall in a hospital bed, and Carter’s past life might have killed her.

  Carter burst to his feet when Ray came out of the waiting room and down the hall. His face was drawn and gray, and Carter felt his world end.

  Ray waited until Carter reached him. Ross and the others hung back, and even Faith did, as though they knew he needed to hear the news on his own.

  “She came through the surgery,” Ray said in a low voice. “She’s in recovery. They say she’ll be all right, though it’s going to be a long road for her.”

  The world came rushing back under Carter’s feet. It hit the soles of his boots and rocked him so hard he’d have fallen over if he hadn’t grabbed on to Ray.

  “Thank you,” Carter said, his voice hoarse. “Thank you.”

  Ray patted his shoulder. “I swear to you, Sullivan,” he rumbled, his own voice a little shaky. “If you kiss me, I’m going to have to kick your ass.”

  ***

  Early November

  By the time Grace had been recovering for six weeks, which included endless doctors’ appointments and physical therapy, she was so bored she was ready to scream.

  She went nowhere but to see doctors, to PT, and home again, driven by Kyle or Ray. That was it. No heavy lifting, driving, or housework. Even her beloved baking and cooking were off limits, unless she had a lot of help.

  Grace didn’t mind the “no housework” rule, especially since she could gleefully watch her two rodeo champion brothers do the vacuuming and wash the dishes.

  Even that got old, though, with them as well as her. Lucy stayed for the first few weeks, but Grace finally told her to go the hell back to Houston. Lucy had a job to return to and was bad at domestic life. Ray was better at keeping house than Lucy. Lucy was kind to help and very worried about Grace, but finally they decided she should go before they had a falling out they’d regret.

  Likewise, Grace told her mom and Carey, her mom’s sweetheart of a boyfriend, to go home. Ray and Kyle took care of her just fine, and her mom and Carey had lives to lead. Grace’s mother finally conceded and said good-bye, but she’d be sure to call Grace every day to check on her.

  Grace breathed a sigh of relief to be on her own. As the baby of the family, the others had always tried to take care of her, which was nice, but also smothering. She’d be fine.

  The woman who’d shot her—Lizzie—hadn’t been found. She wasn’t in River County, that was certain, or in the small towns around it. She could have gone to Houston, where she’d been living when she’d met Carter, or Austin, where her family had a large house on the river. However, police had questioned all her known associates, including her parents, who all claimed they hadn’t seen her in the last nine years.

  Ross told Grace this, keeping her informed. So sweet of him.

  She hadn’t seen hide nor hair of Carter.

  On Monday of week number seven, when Ross came to visit, Grace stood up from the sofa she’d spent way too much time on.

  “Take me to Circle C with you,” she said. “My doctors say I’m fine to do cooking again, and I want to go back to work.”

  Ross, a younger version of his stunt-riding, movie-acting older brothers, gave her a hesitant look. “Gunshot wounds are no joke, Grace. I’ve had one. Took me a long time to recover, and mine wasn’t as serious as yours.”

  “I’m not planning to run a marathon. I just want to do something. Your brothers are plenty tall enough to lift things out of cupboards for me, and your mom already has help with the hard cleaning. I love that job, Ross. I want it back. Unless … Unless they don’t want me to come back.”

  She didn’t like how forlorn the last words sounded. She hadn’t realized how much working at Circle C had meant to her.

  As the youngest in the family, Grace had learned how to make puppy-dog eyes to melt her siblings and parents. She did it now.

  Ross rolled his eyes, blue as a summer lake. “All right, I’ll take you. But it’s up to my mom whether you come back. And the minute you hurt, you stop.”

  “Promise.” Grace sketched a quick cross over her heart. “Let’s go.”

  Ross grumbled misgivings, but he escorted her out and helped her into his SUV.

  “Want lights and sirens?” he asked as he started up.

  “Don’t embarrass me. Just take me …” Grace bit off the word home. It wasn’t her home, but a place she’d been happy. “To Circle C,” she finished.

  Ross pretended he didn’t notice the slip, and pulled away from the ranch house, making for the highway.

  Grace realized, when Ross drove out the other side of Riverbend and then turned up the twisting lane toward the Campbells’ ranch, that it wasn’t the house, the stables, the stretches of corrals, she was looking eagerly forward to, but the people. One person in particular—the tall, tough-looking Carter Sullivan, who stood out from the Campbells even as he was one of them.

  She didn’t see him. Grace tried to stem her disappointment that he wasn’t there as Ross stopped the SUV in front of the house and ushered her in through the front door.

  ***

  Carter had been driving Faith to and from the school in White Fork himself for the last six weeks. He’d been too uneasy to let anyone else take her—he didn’t want Faith on the school bus or even for Olivia to drive her.

  If he’d been able to put an armed guard on Faith at the school, or better still, keep her home, he would have. Carter was looking into home schooling, though Faith was fighting that. She loved school and all her friends and teachers, and didn’t want to leave them.

  Faith waved good-bye to her girlfriends and climbed into Carter’s truck, settling her bag at her feet.

  She chattered about her day all the way home, what so-and-so had said to someone else in the cafeteria, how well she’d done on a spelling test, and how her teachers had asked her to stay after and help with the upcoming science fair. Faith and a couple of the “smarter kids” were being asked. It was an honor.

  Carter shot her a glance. “That’s real nice, but I don’t want you staying late at school.”

  “Dad.” Faith’s eyes got big. “They don’t ask just anyone.”

  “I think they’ll understand why I want to keep you at home.” The teachers had all been informed about Lizzie and what she was capable of.

  Faith slammed herself back into the seat. “This is not fair. I didn’t do anything.”

  Carter agreed with her, but he couldn’t shake his
fears. “It’s only until we’re sure you’re safe.”

  Faith heaved a sigh. “I know. I do understand. Why’d I get stuck with a crazy woman for a mom? Why couldn’t you date nice girls, like Grace?”

  “’Cause I wasn’t a nice boy,” Carter said, unoffended. “Girls like Grace didn’t have the time of day for me, and her brothers would have chased me off with a shotgun. Your mom and I … it was just one of those things.”

  Carter didn’t believe in hiding his murky past from Faith—she deserved to know what kind of man he’d been.

  “Yeah, I know,” Faith said. “And I’m really, really glad, trust me, that I live with you and Grandma and not my mother. But sometimes I wish I had a normal family.”

  “I know, baby.”

  What was normal, though? Carter had never known it. His own parents had been mostly absent; drunk, high, and abusive when present. He’d recognized at a very young age that he was better off without them.

  Even after Carter had run away from them, he’d known that the life he had, living in the back room of a chop shop run by a sadistic bastard called Joss Brady wasn’t right. It was very confusing for Carter to see other kids with parents who were good to them, and wonder what he’d done wrong. Joss gave him food and a place to sleep, but he found Carter a nuisance when he wasn’t using him to run covert errands or making him crawl into the tight spaces of cars to dismantle them.

  Carter hadn’t been truly wanted for himself until he came to Circle C, and then it had taken him a long time to accept that Olivia was neither going to work him to death nor toss him out.

  When Carter had first looked down at baby Faith in his arms, he’d vowed she’d never be unwanted. He’d take care of her until his dying day.

  Carter reached over and ruffled her hair. “I’ll fix this, baby. Don’t you worry. You’ll do your science fair thing.”

  Faith’s scowl cleared. “Okay. I’m sorry. I’m just …”

  “I know. It sucks.”

  Carter turned in at Circle C’s drive and continued up to the house. He never failed to be happy to be home.