“Kennedy’s not here, so I have to stay at the bar.”
“No, you don’t. You’re not supposed to talk to me or come see me. But I’m telling you I want to talk to you now, and I expect someone to take care of the bar for you while you get yourself out here.” I was very, very angry. And I did something so rude that Gran would have choked. I hung up.
In thirty minutes I heard Sam’s truck. I was standing at the back porch door when he walked up. I could see the cloud of regret around him as clearly as if it had been a tangible thing.
“Don’t you tell me how you’re not supposed to be here and you can’t come in,” I said, though it took me a minute to stoke my fire back up after seeing his unhappiness. “We’re going to talk.” Sam hung back, and I reached out to take his hand the way he’d taken mine at the hospital. I pulled him closer, and he tried to stay away, he really did, but he couldn’t bring himself to do anything rough. “Now, you come sit in the living room and you talk to me. And before you start making up a story, let me tell you . . . Bill came by and he had a very interesting tale to tell. So I know everything, though not all the details.”
“I shouldn’t. I promised not to.”
“You don’t have a choice, Sam. I’m not giving you one.”
He took a deep breath. “None of us had enough money for your bail. I wasn’t going to have you spend any more time in that place than you had to. I called the bank president at home to ask him about a loan on the bar, but I got turned down.”
That, I hadn’t known. I was horrified. “Oh, no, Sam . . .”
“So,” he bulldozed over me, “I went to Eric the second it got dark. Of course, he’d heard you’d been arrested and he was totally pissed off. But he was mostly angry that I’d tried to bail you out on my own. That vampire, Freyda, she was sitting right by him.” Remembering, Sam was so angry that his teeth were bared. “Finally, she told him he could go on and bail you out, but with conditions.”
“With her conditions.”
“Yeah. The first condition was that you never see Eric again. Or enter Oklahoma. On penalty of death. But Eric said no, he had a better idea. He was trying to let her think he was doing something bad to you, but he was really doing something bad to me. He agreed to the part about you not entering Oklahoma, and he agreed that he would never be alone with you again, but he tacked on another one she wouldn’t have thought of. It was that I could never tell you I’d asked Eric to put up the bail. And I could never try to . . . court you.”
“And you agreed.” I was feeling about five different emotions at once.
“I agreed. It seemed to be the only way to get you out of that damn jail. I confess that I needed sleep bad and my thinking may not have been real clear.”
“Okay. Let me tell you something right now. As of this morning, the assets of Claudine’s bank are now unfrozen, and I can post my own bail. I don’t exactly know how to do it, but we can go to the bondsman tomorrow, and tell him I want to give Eric’s money back and put mine in its place. I’m not real sure how all that works, but I’ll bet it can be done.” Finally, I had a coherent picture. Eric had been angry at losing control of his own life. Further, Eric was convinced Sam was waiting in the wings to take his place in my bed. There were some implications that I’d store away to think about later.
“So, are you mad at me?” Sam asked. “Or do you think I’m wonderful for getting you out? Or a fool for making a deal with Eric? Or lucky that Bill told you the truth?” His head was full of optimism, pessimism, and apprehension. “I still don’t know what to do about the promise I made Eric.”
“I’m just relieved that you’re okay now. You did the best you could when you thought of it, and your whole reason to agree to such a stupid thing