Maybe…
No, it couldn’t be. If he was lucky, Sarah was still at the ranch finding the woman she was meant to be. He was hoping to have one more shot at redemption before she gave up on him completely.
But there was no way she’d come running if he got hurt. She still thought she could blame everything that ever happened to her on one single bad guy, and the bad guy was him.
That was the other thing he’d do with his second chance. It had been wrong to let her go on believing something from outside yourself could destroy your whole life. He didn’t mind playing the bad guy if she needed one, but realizing she was in control of her own life would set her free. Nobody could take success away from her if she was true to herself.
That’s what he’d tell her, but he’d find a way to tell it that sounded a little less corny.
The edges of the shadows sharpened and for a second he thought he could see, but then he realized he was still hallucinating. He had to be, because the woman sitting beside him really was Sarah—but she was dressed in gloriously dirty cowgirl clothes. She was the Sarah he’d been hoping to find, her hair windblown and tangled with little bits of straw dangling here and there. And she wasn’t wearing a shred of makeup. Her face was pink and unadorned except for a smudge of mud across her forehead.
She looked like a girl from Two Shot, Wyoming, like a woman who’d shed those prim little suits and forbidding frowns forever. She looked like a woman who held a horse and pressed her cheek against its neck, the woman who kicked rocks and danced in worn-out boots, a woman who made love in the bed of a pickup in the moonlight, a woman who danced the simple, timeless dance of trust with a horse when she thought nobody was looking.
The curtain’s metal rings zinged across the rod as a nurse whipped it back.
“Looks like he’ll be okay,” she said. “He’ll have one heck of a headache, and he might not be much use for a few days, but tests show no real damage.”
Her voice didn’t sound one bit like Sarah’s. In fact, if he couldn’t see her, he’d think he’d been right about the ducks. But Sarah was there, standing beside the cot, and Trevor was sitting in his wheelchair in a corner of the cubicle, his eyes suspiciously bright.
“He was never any use anyway. Can we take him home?”
“Soon as he’s okay to get up.”
Sarah—it really was Sarah—smiled at him and he almost thought he was dying again, she glowed so bright. The last time he’d had a wreck he’d seen her holding that horse and he’d thought she was some sweet equestrian angel come to take him away. Now he knew she was no angel.
But if she’d just drop her guard she’d be the kind of woman he needed. He reached out a hand and brushed a strand of hair away from her face. She reached up at the same time and he trapped her hand in his. He knew what they meant now when they said you’d been shot by Cupid’s arrow. He felt like that duck, downed by a single shot.
“It’s you,” he said.
“Yeah.” She even talked like a small-town girl now. Maybe he really had died and gone to heaven.
“No, I mean, it’s really you.”
She laughed and spread her arms. “That’s for sure. Complete and unadulterated. Unbathed, too. Sorry. I was playing with your horses all day.”
Playing. That’s just what he’d hoped she’d do.
“Don’t be sorry.” He squeezed her hand and felt his own heart expand in response. “This is the way I love you.”
The smile faded. “You don’t mean that.”
“Sure I do.” He’d vowed to tell her the truth, and there it was. Something in her heart called to his, and no matter who she decided to be from here on out, he’d always love her. “I know you don’t want to hear it. I know you think I took your life away from you. But Sarah, I didn’t. I…”
“I know.” Her eyes brightened with unshed tears and she looked even more like an angel as she wrapped her other hand around his. “I know what happened with Flash. I know you helped him, and you didn’t steal him. You saved him.” Her voice dropped to a whisper. “I think you might have saved me too.”
He didn’t