Slightly put off by his unusual intensity, Sam blinked at him. “I went to pick up my brother.” Carter waved at Chase over the rim of his second mug of coffee. “He’s an idiot. He ended up in Morgansville with a flat tire.”
“You didn’t drive up there,” Chase stated.
“No, I took Dollar and Sugar. I stupidly thought that would be quicker than driving on the proper road past the silver mine, and round the back of the ghost town.” Sam raised her eyebrows. “What’s going on? I lost my phone somewhere so I couldn’t get in touch with anyone.”
“Jeez.” Chase let out his breath. “What a mess.”
“What do you mean?” Sam asked slowly. “And why are you using my laptop?”
“We didn’t know where you’d gone,” Chase explained. “We were trying to ping your phone.”
“When you say ‘we’ who exactly are we talking about here?” Sam asked.
“Me, Ry, and HW.”
Sam groaned. “Oh, no.”
“Oh yeah.” Chase sighed. “I was just talking to Ry. He and HW rode out to see if they could locate your phone. They found it by the creek.”
“Did HW think I’d fallen in the water?”
“No.” Chase grimaced. “HW read your last texts out to Ry. I guess HW misread them or misunderstood the context.”
Sam frowned. “I can’t even remember what I said.”
“Something along the lines of you going to meet someone—which I now assume was your brother, but apparently HW didn’t make the same connection.”
“He thinks I’ve gone off with another man.” Sam didn’t make it a question. She knew HW would immediately imagine the worst. She shot to her feet. “Where is he? I need to talk to him.”
“That’s the other thing I was going to tell you.” Chase sat back and looked up at her. “Ry said HW pocketed your phone, and then rode off on Messi. We haven’t heard or seen him since.”
Sam set off for the barn again, ignoring Chase’s plea for her to wait. She had to find HW and explain. Just as she reached the barn, Ry and his horse arrived back, and he rode toward her.
“Sam. Thank goodness. I told HW he was being a fool, but he wouldn’t listen to me.”
“Of course he wouldn’t listen.” Sam choked back tears. “He’s as stubborn as the rest of you. Which direction did he go in?”
“Hold your horses,” Ry said. “What are you planning to do, go haring after him so we lose both bride and groom?”
“Yes, you big dope!” Sam actually stamped her foot. “You know what he’s like. I have to make this right with him!”
“How about we try it my way?” Ry smiled, which didn’t help, and only reminded her achingly of HW. “I’ll send him a text to get him coming back this way, and then you can ride out to meet him.”
“Will he stop to read a text from you?” Sam asked suspiciously.
“Seeing as he’s probably still hoping you’ll show up, then yes.” Ry held her gaze. “Despite what you think, he can’t really believe you’d do that to him.”
“Why not? You of all people know how much losing his mother hurt him.”
“Yeah, but I also know you’re nothing like her. HW just needs to calm down and remember that,” Ry said.
“Okay.” Sam nodded. “Send him a text.”
Ry took off his gloves, extracted his phone from the back of the pocket of his Wranglers, and typed away, his smile widening.
“That should do it.”
“What did you say?” Sam asked.
Ry read it out to her. “Sam at ranch. Wants to speak to you. Come back now before it is too late.”
“Do you really think that will work?” Sam said dubiously. “It sounds super dramatic.”
Ry shrugged. “It’s worth a shot. He’s had half an hour to cool off and start thinking things through. That’s usually enough time to get some sense into his thick skull.” He dismounted and walked his horse toward the barn. “How about we cool this guy off, and wait and see if HW’s the man I think he is.”
* * *
HW stared at the text from Ry and couldn’t decide whether it was relief he was feeling or something much more complicated that he couldn’t even begin to untangle. He stared out across Morgan Valley toward the Sierras noting how utterly small and insignificant he was in the big scheme of things. Should he go back and face Sam? If she’d had the nerve to come and find him, surely he owed her the same favor?
He tried to run through all the possible scenarios of how it might go, and almost drove himself crazy. If he loved her—and he did with all his heart—he had to at least hear her out. She might just have gotten scared again. Maybe there was something he’d been missing, and she had good and valid reasons for dumping him on their wedding day.
“Bullshit,” HW muttered. “She loves me!”
It dawned on him that in his heart he had already decided to go back and have it out with her. Sam was nothing like the mother who had walked out on him and she deserved better. Whatever happened between them next, at least this time he’d get closure.
With one long, last look at the mountains that surrounded and protected the valley he loved and called home, HW mounted up and turned around.
He was just coming into the fenced home pastures when a rider approached him waving frantically. He slowed to a stop and waited. The only sign of his tension translated into the fidgety sidestepping of his horse.
Sam rode up to him. She’d lost her hat, her face was red, and her hair all over the place, and she looked absolutely frantic. She slid down from the horse, grabbing onto the saddle to steady herself, and looked up at him.
“I lost my phone! I had to go and pick up my really stupid baby brother who ended up in Morgansville of all places, with no gas, and a deflated tire! And then he wouldn’t get on the bloody horse, and I had to make him, and then he took hours to get back, and I didn’t know what the time was because neither of us wears a watch, and—”
HW dismounted, walked up to her, and pulled her roughly into his arms. The feel of her pressed against him made him bury his face in her hair and just breathe her in. He didn’t pray often, but he was making up for it now. After a little while, she thumped on his chest, and he eased back just a little so he could see her face.
“Aren’t you going to shout at me?” Sam asked.
“Maybe later.” HW swallowed hard. “At the moment I’m just . . . glad you’re here.”
She cupped his chin. “You thought I’d walked out on you.”
“For a little while, yeah, I did.” He sighed. “But somehow I couldn’t convince myself of it, even when all the signs pointed that way.”
“What signs?” Sam asked.
“You not telling me stuff, the lack of any wedding crap in your bedroom . . . that kind of thing.”
“Oh, HW.” She kissed his mouth. “That’s the other thing I didn’t want to tell you.”
“What?” HW tensed again.
“The wedding dress bit.” She met his gaze. “My dress was lost in the mail. I’m going to have to borrow January’s. I was . . . a bit upset about it, and I didn’t want to bother you about something so trivial.”