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The morning was overcast, and a burst of wind blew the snow around. The man lifted his face, and suddenly a glimmer of sun came out.
Allie couldn’t believe her eyes. It was like her thoughts had conjured up her worst nightmare.
“Clay?” she whispered even though no one could hear her.
His shoulders were broader than she remembered, but she’d recognize his stride anywhere. He was always prepared to take on the world, and it showed in the way he moved. Confident to the point of arrogance. He reminded her of her father in that way.
Clay’s dark Stetson left his face in shadows. She couldn’t see his black hair or his piercing blue eyes, but it was him all right.
He suddenly stopped midway to the house and stared at the open door. Surely the darkness in the house meant he wouldn’t be able to see her clearly enough to know who she was. But he stared as though he could see through the screen and recognize her. He’d always been able to make her feel that he could look right down to her soul. It was those eyes of his.
Of course, that was nonsense, she told herself as she stepped back then, and instinctively slammed the door closed. He had ordinary eyes even if they were a startling icy blue.
“What’re you doing that for?” her father asked, grumbling as he limped across the kitchen floor in his slippers. “We got company.”
“It’s Clay West,” Allie said, leaning back against the door.
“Well, so what?” her father asked, his chin up like he was ready to argue. He held a rolled-up magazine in his hand.
“Clay West,” she repeated. “You remember—he’s the foster kid who lived here. He’s the reason Mark is where he is today.”
“You don’t need to tell me who he is,” her father said. “I was here.”
“I was, too,” Allie protested. She still remembered the night the sheriff had come to their door after midnight. Mark was already in an ambulance on the way to the hospital. Clay sat in the back of the sheriff’s car, handcuffed and silent. He never looked up at her.
The sheriff told Allie her brother had been drunk on tequila, but she assured the officer that Mark had never taken a drink of hard liquor in his life. She would know if he had, she’d explained. She was a year younger than Mark, but she’d always been more responsible than he was. As her mother lay dying, she had asked Allie to watch over Mark and make sure he didn’t start drinking alcohol. The family was unusually susceptible, she’d said. Mark might have gotten the beer that night, but the empty tequila bottle found in the pickup had to belong to Clay. Allie didn’t know why Clay’s alcohol blood level wasn’t that high, but she knew that the tequila had to belong to him.
Allie’s father reached for the door handle. “Clay’s probably hungry. He’ll want some bacon with his eggs. He’s my new ranch hand. And they say he’s an artist—sort of like Charlie Russell.”
Her father waved the magazine at her.
Allie wondered if her father had started drinking again. He had promised he wouldn’t. His fondness for whiskey had nearly ruined their family when she was young. There were no other indications her father had started drinking again, but the possibility had to be examined. She lived too far away to monitor him very well now, but she remembered the past. Alcohol always turned her father’s mind fuzzy. He’d get foolish ideas and act on them. And what he said now was preposterous.
“We can’t—” She started talking to her father, but he was paying attention only to the man standing outside their door.
Allie had thought she’d never lay eyes on Clay again. It wasn’t fair that he walked around every day a whole man while Mark was lying in a convalescent bed staring at the ceiling and struggling to form a coherent sentence.
And now Clay was here—on their porch—and looking better than he had any right to be.
Her world had just turned upside down, and she didn’t know what to do about it.
Chapter Two (#ulink_113a1da1-e5ab-5da6-881c-cafce09554b3)
Clay looked through the screen into the shadows of the kitchen, and his heart sank. For a moment he had thought it was Allie inside the room. Now he saw it was only Mr. Nelson reaching toward the door wearing denim overalls hooked over his white long johns. The unshaven man held a magazine in one hand and fumbled with the catch to open the screen with the other. A lock of his gray hair fell across his brow as he bent his head in concentration. There were lines in the man’s face that Clay did not remember being there and dark circles under his eyes.
“Here, let me help you,” Clay said as he jiggled the handle on the door from the outside. He had figured out how to make that latch work years ago. A person had to press it just right and it moved smooth as butter.
“You came,” the older man said as Clay pushed the door open.
Clay nodded as he stepped into the warmth of the kitchen. It was just as well it was only the two of them. Maybe then the man would tell him why he’d sent for him. When Clay had been convicted of armed robbery, Mr. Nelson told him never to come back to Dry Creek. The old man had meant it that day. People didn’t just change their minds for no reason. Maybe the church had put pressure on Mr. Nelson to bring Clay back.
“I can’t take your job under false premises—” Clay started, suspecting the rancher would be happy to end this charade, too. He likely hadn’t wanted to make the offer in the first place. “So if you plan—”
“Hush,” the older man whispered. Then he turned and gave a worried glance at something behind the door. “We can talk later.” The man’s voice returned to normal. “You’ll want breakfast first. Right?”
Before Clay could answer, he heard a feminine gasp.
“Allie?” Clay whispered as he turned to the side. The main part of the kitchen was filled with shadows, but he’d know the sound of her voice anywhere.
In the darkness, he saw her. She stood off to the side by the refrigerator with a beat-up metal spatula braced in her arms like it was a sword and she was a warrior queen ready to defend her kingdom. She used to love to pretend at games like that. Garden rakes became horses. Leaves made a tiara. She’d told him once that she had wanted to be an actress when she was little. Of course, that was before she fell in love with horses. Then all she wanted was to work on this ranch for the rest of her life.
Clay wished he had a pencil in hand so he could sketch her. A thin glow of morning light was coming through the window, and it outlined her in gold. Her posture showed her outrage and her resolve. She wasn’t looking at him, though. Instead, her eyes were fastened on her father.
“I’m not cooking for him,” she announced as she jabbed the long-handled spatula in Clay’s general direction. It was a dismissive gesture. Then she crossed her arms, letting the metal implement stick out.
Well, Clay thought, trying to hide his smile, at least someone in Dry Creek believed in telling the truth as she saw it. He should be upset, but he couldn’t take his gaze off Allie. She’d always fascinated him. Gradually, however, as he studied her, he realized the young teen he’d known was all grown up. The girlish lines of her face were gone, and she had the sleekness of a sophisticated young woman even in the faded apron she wore tied around her denim jeans. Her auburn hair was thick and as unruly as he remembered, although she’d tried to pull it into some order and knot it at the back of her neck. The pink in her cheeks was no doubt due to the cold that had come in from the opened door, but it made her look impassioned.
“I don’t need to eat.” Clay spoke mildly, and then he swallowed. This new Allie made him feel self-conscious. He wished he had taken time to get a haircut before he left the prison. “I do have something to say, however—”
“It’ll do no good to say you are sorry,” Allie interrupted as she stepped closer and stood in the light of the open door. She gave him a withering look. “Words won’t make one bit of difference to Mark. And you should close the door.”
“Sorry,” Clay said as he reached behind him and did so. “But I wasn’t going to apologize.”
No one answered, and the tension in the room jumped higher. Clay figured a new haircut wouldn’t have made him look much better.
“Now, Allie,” Mr. Nelson finally said. “Clay’s a guest in this house. And, of course, he’s going to eat. Your mother wouldn’t send anyone away hungry. You know that.”
Allie turned to Clay, and he felt the air leave his lungs. She’d changed again. The sprinkling of freckles across her nose was the same, but her green eyes blazed. They showed the same fury that had consumed her at the trial. He had hoped the years would have softened her toward him.
“I’ll make you some toast and you can be on your way,” she finally said.
“I have no quarrel with you,” he answered quietly. He missed the girl who had been his friend. “Never did.”
“Nobody here is quarreling,” Mr. Nelson said firmly as he frowned at Allie. “We know how to be civil.”
Clay snuck another peak at Allie. The fire was gone from her eyes, but he did not like the bleakness that replaced it.
“I just want to explain,” Clay said then. There was so much he wanted to say to Allie, and this might be his only chance to say anything. But he had to be wise.
“You okay these days?” he asked.
She didn’t even blink.
He figured that all he could speak of was that night. “I should have convinced Mark to go back to the ranch earlier that night. But the robbery—it wasn’t my doing. That bottle of tequila wasn’t mine. I didn’t know Mark had it with him. I was driving. It was dark inside the cab of the pickup. I thought he was still drinking his bottle of beer. We each had one. And I was pumping fuel into the pickup when he took the rifle off the rack behind us and went into the gas station. I didn’t even see him at first. I had no idea what he planned.”
“Are you saying Mark was the one at fault?” The fire in her eyes came back. Her voice was clipped as she faced Clay squarely. “That you didn’t know anything about it?”
“I’m not saying he was at fault—” Clay stopped, unsure how to proceed. He didn’t need an apology for the way anyone had treated him. He didn’t want her to think that. He wanted her to believe him because she trusted him to tell the truth. Her opinion of him mattered, and he’d fight for it.
“It’s cowardly to blame Mark when he can’t even defend himself,” she said, her voice low and intense. “I know Mark, and I know he wouldn’t plan any robbery. It had to be you. I thought all those years in prison would have taught you to tell the truth if nothing else.”
Clay studied Allie’s face. She was barely holding on to her tears. He knew how that felt.
“I already knew how to tell the truth,” he said softly. “I had barely stepped inside the place when the rifle went off. Mark and the station clerk were already struggling with each other when I saw them—I told everyone that at the trial. That’s why all they could charge me with was being an accessory to the crime.”
Clay saw the battle inside Allie. She never liked fighting with anyone, but he could see she was determined to blast him away from here. At least her anger seemed to have pushed back her tears. He could take the hit if it made her feel better.
“You were judged guilty,” she said firmly. Her eyes flashed. “Everyone agreed. I don’t understand how you can stand there and pretend to be innocent.”
“I have no choice.” Clay hoped his face didn’t show his defeat. The two of them would never be friends again. Maybe they never had been. “I have to stand here and tell you what happened if I want you to know the truth. I’m sorry if you can’t accept it.”
Mr. Nelson cleared his throat as though he was going to speak. Clay held up his hand and looked at the older man. “I know my parole is tied to this job. If it doesn’t work out, you can call someone and they will contact the local sheriff—I’m assuming Carl Wall is the one here. Anyway, since the pickup is yours, I have to leave it here. The sheriff will see that I get back to prison. Thanks, too, for having the vehicle sent over. You can decide.”
Mr. Nelson was silent.
“You just got here,” the rancher finally mumbled, looking uncomfortable.
Clay nodded. He still wasn’t sure why he’d been asked to come, but he wasn’t going to stay if it was a problem. He’d learned his lesson about making sure he was wanted before he stayed anyplace.
“Everybody knows—” Allie started to say. She stopped when Clay looked at her.
“Everybody doesn’t know as much as they think they do,” he finally said.
She didn’t answer. It was so quiet in the kitchen that Clay thought he could hear the cat inside his coat purring. The heater in the pickup he’d driven over hadn’t worked very well, and the tabby was likely content just to be out of the cold. Clay sometimes wished he could be satisfied with the small victories in life like that. A good dinner. A moment’s comfort. They should be enough. Instead, he wanted people, especially Allie, to know who he was. And no one could claim to know Clay West if they thought he was a liar. He probably shouldn’t care, but he did.
“Do they still ask people in the church to stand up and say what’s wrong in their lives?” he asked. That was the only way he knew to address everyone in the area. He wouldn’t need to stay for the sermon.
“You mean for prayers?” Allie sounded surprised. Then her eyes slid over him suspiciously. “You want to ask us to pray for you?”
“The church will be happy to pray for you,” Mr. Nelson said as he waved the magazine in the air. “Everyone has read about you here. The hardware store got in a dozen copies. The ranchers are all talking about you as they sit around that stove in the middle of the store. You remember that stove? You’re practically famous there.”
Clay felt a sudden desire to sit down, but he couldn’t. Not yet.
He never should have done that interview for the Montana Artist Journal. Allie was looking at him skeptically.
“That reporter exaggerated,” Clay said. “I’m no Charlie Russell in the making—except for maybe that we both like to roam. I sketch faces and scenes. Simple pencil drawings. That’s all.” He’d had offers from a couple of magazines to print his prison sketches and had even gotten an art agent out of the deal, but Clay saw no reason to mention that. “And I’m not interested in anyone praying for me. I just want to set the record straight on what happened that night with Mark. I want the facts known.”
One of the few things Clay remembered from his early life was his father urging him to always tell the truth. Both his parents had died soon after that in a car accident. Clay clung to that piece of advice because it was all he had left of his family. He wanted to feel that he belonged to them no matter where he went.
Allie looked at him. “I won’t have you saying bad things about Mark.”
Clay studied her. She no longer seemed to be as angry, but she was wary.
“I’ll just tell what happened.” Clay paused before continuing. “That’s all I’m aiming for. And, after that, if you still don’t want me here, I will go back. I can’t make people believe me. I didn’t have high hopes coming here anyway. I can even stay somewhere else tonight. Tomorrow’s Sunday, right? Does Mrs. Hargrove still rent out that room above her garage?”
The older woman had been the only one to stand up for him at his trial, and he counted her as a friend. She had sent him cards every birthday and Christmas while he had been locked up. He’d done his best to send her cards in return. Usually he enclosed a few sketches; over time he’d sent her a dozen Dry Creek scenes. The café. The hardware store. Every main building, except for the church. He’d never managed a sketch of that. He wouldn’t mind spending a couple of nights in her rental room before he headed back to prison. He had sold enough pencil portraits to other prisoners over the years to have a tidy sum in a savings account. He could pay for the room easily.
“Mrs. Hargrove?” Allie asked, frowning. “I’m sure the parole board doesn’t want you speaking out and giving good people like her a hard time. She’s having trouble with her feet these days.”
“The parole board sent me here.” Clay felt guilty that he hadn’t known about the aches in the older woman’s feet. “They had to figure I’d talk to someone. Besides, I can even help Mrs. Hargrove out some if I’m at her place. It could be a good thing. She probably needs logs for that woodstove of hers. The winter is going on long this year. I could get her all set with more firewood. Some kindling, too. She’d like that.”
“The board probably doesn’t realize the harm you could do here.” Allie turned to face her father again, and Clay couldn’t see her expression. “But we know.”
Mr. Nelson cleared his throat, eyeing his daughter. “Don’t look at me that way. We’re not sending him away.”
“Why not?” Clay asked softly. Father and daughter both turned to him in concern. He had to admit he was a little taken aback himself, but nothing was ever gained by dodging the truth. He spoke to Mr. Nelson. “When I saw you last, you were determined to make me suffer for what happened. I remember what you said. ‘Let him rot in that black hole of a place. We don’t want him back here.’ So I’m asking straight out, what’s changed?”
The rancher paled at Clay’s words. “I suppose you want an apology from me, too, now?”
Clay shook his head impatiently. “I just want a plainspoken answer. Why am I here?”
Mr. Nelson stood there thinking for a minute.
“For what it’s worth, I am sorry,” the older man finally said. “I said awful things to you and about you. No Christian should say such things.”
“People say a lot of things they shouldn’t,” Clay said. “Christian or not.”
Allie started to say something, but her father held up a hand to stop her. “He has a right to ask what’s going on.”
Everyone was silent. Clay watched as the older man debated something.
“I’m doing this for Mark,” Mr. Nelson finally admitted, his voice thick with emotion. The rancher continued speaking, his eyes on Clay. “I didn’t want to ask you, but I finally realized we need you. There’s no one else.”
Clay saw defeat in the other man’s eyes. Clay had been in prison long enough to recognize the look on a man’s face when he had no choice except the bitter one in front of him. The man was finally being honest.
“But you still blame me?” Clay asked. He wanted things to be clear.
The older man didn’t answer.
“Will you help us anyway?” Mr. Nelson finally asked.
“I don’t see how I—” Clay began to politely refuse the request. There were worse things than being locked up in a cell. Being around people who didn’t trust him was one of them. He’d be free on his own terms in two years. He could wait.
Allie had been silent, but now she sputtered indignantly a moment until she found words. “Mark would be the last person to want him here to help.”
Anger scorched the air.
Clay tried not to wince. “I should leave.”
He decided he’d call Sheriff Wall himself if he had to. If it warmed up outside, he could hitchhike back to prison. He had more sketches to do there anyway.
Clay waited for Allie to turn around, but she kept facing her father with her back stiff enough to make her displeasure clear.
“Please don’t look at me that way,” Mr. Nelson said to her. “We have no choice. Mark wants to see Clay. Mark has always looked on him as a brother.”
* * *
Allie jerked sideways. She could barely believe her ears. “What?”
