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Sirens wailed in the distance, a reminder that this wasn’t over yet. Still, Sloan smiled when she spread the blanket on the settee and lay Jake on it. She was fully aware that there was much more they needed to say to each other, but all those words could wait until they were alone.
Then she remembered something that couldn’t wait.
“Oh my God. Where are they?” She cast a frantic look around the room.
“What are you talking about?” Trey frowned.
By then Sloan had already spotted them, lying on the floor a few feet away. Leaving Jake lying on the blanket, she darted over and scooped up the folded sheets.
“That’s the information about Laredo that Rutledge gave you,” Trey guessed immediately.
Sloan nodded and hurriedly began folding the papers into a small square. “The police don’t need to find them,” she said and tucked them inside Jake’s little suit pants before wrapping him in the blanket and gathering him into her arms. Finished, she turned to Trey. “We can burn them after we get home.”
He moved to her and cupped a hand to her cheek, gratitude, love, and approval shining in his dark eyes. “You know what we call that out here?”
“What?” Sloan was conscious of the quick hammer of her pulse at his nearness.
“Riding for the brand,” he said, referring to the oldest term for the pledge of loyalty in the West.
Shouts came from outside, accompanied by the clump of more feet. Turning, Trey curved an arm around her shoulders, drawing her protectively to his side. “It’s all going to be fine.”
“I know,” she said.
Epilogue
Afternoon sunlight slanted through the Suburban’s windshield, heating the interior. Trey was behind the wheel, driving one-handed, with Sloan nestled close against his side, his arm around her shoulders. The east entrance was behind them, and the rugged, rolling land of the Triple C stretched on either side. With the warm feel of her against him, there was a rightness to his world again.
Trey stole a glance over his shoulder, the corners of his mouth lifting at the sight of his baby son in the carrier, safely strapped in the backseat. It was the same carrier he had angrily tossed in the Suburban after leaving the hospital without his wife and son. But Trey chose not to remember that.
“He’s still sound asleep,” he told Sloan.
“It’ll be just about time for his next bottle when we get home.” It was an idle remark, indicative of the way a new mother marked time.
“It’s going to feel like a home again with you in it.” When he looked at her, Trey didn’t see the drying bloodstains on her top, only the strong beauty of her profile and the sheen of her dark hair. “It was nothing but a big, empty house when you were gone.”
“You don’t know how much I regret that.” A thread of unease ran through Sloan’s voice. “I only hope your family understands, although I wouldn’t blame them if they didn’t—not after all the trouble I caused.”
“That was Rutledge’s doing, not yours.” Trey was definite about that.
“But I believed his lies,” Sloan reminded him.
“And I should have seen his hand in what was happening. There’s plenty of blame to go around in this,” he told her. “But it’s over now. We’ve weathered our first storm.”
“There will be others, though.” Sloan saw the potential of another one coming. She decided to face it now. “Trey, I have to know. Do you object to me having a career of my own?”
He hesitated and her heart sank. Then he said, “I know how much you love photography, Sloan.”
“That isn’t what I asked.” She kept her gaze fixed on the road ahead, pain squeezing her heart.
“Look, I don’t expect you to give it up.” There was an impatient edge to his voice, a little hard and angry. “But I don’t deny that sometimes I resent it “
Stunned, she turned a demanding look at him, ready to fight. “Why?”
“I know it’s wrong to feel that way,” Trey began in his own defense. “But, dammit, Sloan, when you have a camera in your hands, you shut everything else out—including me. It’s like you’re in another world, and I’m not part of it at all.”
Relief washed through her, eliciting a soft, amused laugh. “You don’t know how wrong you are, Trey,” she told him. “You’re there in every picture I take.”
“Right,” he replied in a voice dry with doubt.
