Ace fussed again, so Luke turned his back on Sarah and the boys to calm the horse. He ignored the sound of their car driving away and the loneliness that settled over him.
“Where’d they all go?” Jerry asked, coming up behind him.
“They left.” Luke’s tone and stance should have warned Jerry he didn’t want to talk and was working on a good mad.
Jerry ignored the danger signs. “Well, I hope you thanked Sarah for what she did. She was amazing with Ace. She sings like an angel, too.”
“Yeah, she does.” He feared her voice would haunt him forever. “She told me I should fire the doc. Can you believe that? She’s not here more than an hour and she’s telling me what to do, like she runs the place.”
Jerry stuffed his hands in his front pockets. “I agree with her. I don’t know what the doc was thinking, but every time she told him to stay back he’d get closer to Ace, agitating him. She’d calm Ace all over again. When she gave Ace his shots, he didn’t even flinch. He just moved closer to her, so that he could touch her. Besides all that, she had to clean several pieces of Doc’s equipment before she used them on Ace.”
“I thought Ace just got nervous around the vet because he knew there’d be a poke or pain.” Luke rubbed his hand down Ace’s nose. “You really stood still for her?” He spoke to the horse, but Jerry answered for him.
“Yep. He didn’t even try to nip her all the while she checked every inch of him, nose to tail. Ask me, he’d have never cut himself if the doc showed any patience toward him. Doc hated that you asked Sarah to tend to Ace and did nothing but cause trouble the whole time she was working on him. Doc treated her downright rude.”
“What’d she do? Bitch and moan about it the whole time.”
“Nope, not a word. She kept singing to Ace, keeping him calm, and doing everything that needed to be done. She must have brushed him from head to tail four, maybe five times.”
He eyed Jerry, seeing the admiration in his eyes. “So you like her?”
“What’s not to like? She’s beautiful, sings better than any person I’ve ever heard on the radio, and treated your stubborn horse like a precious baby. Why are you being so hard on her?”
Luke wanted to kick his own ass. “I don’t know.” Because she might have screwed over Sean.
Because she got under his skin and he wasn’t sure he could trust her.
Jerry shook his head in dismay. “Ask me, you should’ve been a little more hospitable to your guest, especially after she worked her ass off for you.”
He raised a brow at Jerry’s tone. “Is that so?”
“God’s truth. I never seen Doc work that hard on Ace, on any animal, or for you.”
The rebuke properly cowed him. “Shit. How am I going to make it up to Sarah?”
“Seems to me a thank-you would do. I think she’d appreciate a simple kindness. She showed enough of it.”
“I don’t know any woman who only wants a simple thank-you.”
“She’s not like other women.” Jerry gave him a you’re-an-idiot look, hooked a lead rope on Ace, and walked him back toward the stables, calling over his shoulder, “It’s not like you to run off a good-looking women. Ask me, that one was a keeper.”
Was she? Margaret didn’t think so. In fact, she blamed Sarah for Sean’s untimely death. She painted a very disturbing picture of Sarah’s past.
But was it true?
He pulled his cell from his back pocket and hit the speed dial despite the fact he didn’t want to go down this road. “Dean, it’s Luke. I have a job for you.”
“You haven’t taken a new client in a while,” his top investigator said.
Yeah, he’d been focused on the ranch. He needed time away from helping people who broke the law circumvent the system, outright get away with their crimes, or serve far less time than they deserved. He had some innocent clients, but most had earned the charges against them and paid him a ton of money to get them out of trouble.
He not only wanted to know, but needed to know which side of the legal line Sarah stood on.
“I’m helping out a friend who is having difficulty getting regular visitations with her grandchildren.” True. But also not exactly a clear picture of the situation. Sarah had brought the children as requested. “Anyway, I need you to dig up everything you can on Sarah Spencer. She runs Spencer Software. I’m particularly interested in an arrest for arson when she was a teen.”
“Those records are probably sealed, boss.”
Luke sighed. “I know you can get them.” Whatever Luke asked for, Dean produced. Dean had contacts everywhere.
“It’ll cost you.”
He had no doubt. “Whatever it costs. I need those records and any others you find.”
“On it. Bad moms are the worst.”
He felt like shit for doing this. From what he’d seen, Sarah was a good mom. She’d done nothing to warrant this kind of intrusive probe into her past.
He just couldn’t live without knowing who she really was. He wasn’t even sure he’d share whatever he found with Margaret.
“Just get it done discreetly and quickly.”
“I’ll let you know as soon as I know.” Dean hung up.
Luke wondered if he’d just made a huge mistake.
He glanced around the arena. All of a sudden, the ranch felt quiet and empty.
He wanted it to feel like home, not just a place to hang and sleep. But he feared it would never really feel that way because home included the people who loved you.
And he lived alone.
Maybe he deserved it for some of the shit he’d done in his career. Like picking apart a woman’s life for no good reason. He was proud of most of his cases. He’d helped a lot of people, but a few of his clients left a black mark on his heart.
He really hoped he didn’t make things worse with Sarah.
He took Stella’s and Mandy’s reins and led them out of the training ring toward the barn to put them back in their stalls so he could check on Ace and deal with the vet. But all he really thought about was how badly he’d handled things with Sarah.
Chapter Ten
Sarah heard the doorbell downstairs. Though she expected Sean’s sister, Bridget, and her daughter, Sophia, to arrive sometime in the next half hour, she still had to tamp down the anticipation that it might be Luke. She hated the way they’d left things yesterday, and especially didn’t like that he thought her reckless and anything like the woman Margaret made her out to be.
Since school had started a few weeks ago, the kids were working on the packets their teachers had given her before they left for the trip. She hated taking them out of school for this extended time but Margaret hadn’t left her a choice.
She handed Jack his math worksheet. “Do all the problems you can on your own. I need to go see who is at the door.” She checked on Nick, lying on the bed with his clipboard in front of him. “How are the b’s coming?”
Nick stopped tracing the next one on the sheet and looked up at her, smiling. “I did it.” He’d traced the dotted letters about twenty times now.
“Great job, buddy.” She handed him a blank sheet. “Now try to write them on your own.”