Erin's Way Read Free

back and laughed. “Hi, Daddy. I’m home!”
    “Damn it, Erin,” Stoner muttered as anger and concern warred with each other in his expression, but when he reached for her, she stumbled backward, shivered, and glared at him. Her whole body trembled, and Sam wasn’t sure if it was from cold, drugs, or just plain nerves.
    Depression weighed on Sam. He rubbed the back of his neck where the muscles tightened with tension. Just once, he wished his encounters with Erin and Stoner could be different, but they all seemed to begin and end the same way with all three of them tense and on the defensive.
    Erin scrubbed her hands up and down her arms as if she were trying to jumpstart the circulation there. “I can’t find my coat. I thought it was on the backseat,” she blurted angrily, “and I’m cold.”
    Sam saw she had on only a sweater. He pushed past her and searched the car, emerging in a moment with a polar fleece-lined ski jacket. He helped her on with it and zipped it. Then he saw the blood trickling down the side of her head. His breath hitched. Fear tightened his gut. He stepped in close enough to touch her head, nerves tightening when she looked up at him for just a moment with her guard down.
    “Erin,” he murmured, but the door had already closed. Her guard was up and her chin jutting. “You’re hurt.” Without waiting, he swung her into his arms and carried her back across the pasture. Somehow, he managed to get her up the bank without landing either of them in the mud. After ripping open the back door of the still running truck, he set her in the warm interior. Erin’s face was pale and her eyes big and dark in the dim light.
    “Stay here!” he ordered. His face felt tense, his brows drawn tightly together. “We have to fix the fence, then I’ll run you and Stoner back to his truck.”
    Erin stared at him. As if the life had suddenly drained from her, she closed her eyes. She leaned her head back against the seat, grimacing in pain. “Okay,” she muttered tonelessly.
    “Erin!” Sam grasped her shoulder, thinking of last fall when she’d bolted as soon as he’d left her alone at Richardson Homestead after giving her a ride home. “You will stay, right?”
    For a second he saw something hot and intense in her gaze, but she looked away and the moment was gone. “Yes. I have to. I don’t have anywhere else to go.”
    He ignored that remark for now. In his experience, Erin appeared and disappeared wherever and whenever she felt like, as long as it was nowhere near him. He tamped down the ache in his chest that thought brought with it. The more drama she could create with her abrupt arrivals and departures, the better. Sam slammed the door and yanked the spool of wire and the temporary posts out of the pickup bed. He turned as Carter and Stoner reached the road.
    “Let’s get this fence up,” he growled. “We’ll run a couple of strands and use battens between the posts that are still up. That should hold until morning when it will have to come down anyway in order to get the car out.” He looked at Stoner, “I guess you had no idea she was coming?”
    Stoner grunted an affirmation. “When have we ever had any idea what Erin planned? Hell, she came out of the womb feet first just to be different.”
    Carter, who had only been with Richardson Homestead for the last four years asked, “That young woman is your daughter, sir? I thought you had only Evan and Tabby.”
    Stoner sighed, then explained, “Erin is Evan’s younger sister. Tabby is their younger half sister. I’d better call Catherine and prepare her. No. On second thought, I don’t want to break this to her over the phone.”
    Sam turned away with a frown and began anchoring the first strand of barbwire. In his mind, he saw again the brave little nine-year-old he’d met so long ago and the way she’d stood up to her father’s chewing out even with the broken arm that had to have hurt like hell. Almost eighteen years later and