Wrangled (23 page)

“Well, there you are. We’ll sue him for
civil damages. He’s got money, and with a conviction on the criminal charges,
it should be a no-brainer. Let’s go see Bill while we’re here in town.”

Right in the middle of the trial, my
attitude did a flip and I suddenly had more clarity than I
’d had since I woke up in the hospital. Up until then, I’d been
depressed, and the medicines that the doctor gave me for it seemed to make it
worse. I couldn’t believe what a mess I’d made of my life. It took more than
six weeks for my arm to heal enough so I could pick up Tali, or change her
diaper, the real estate office was closed down so I couldn’t work, even if I’d
been able to face people. And I was back on Russ and Charity’s, well, charity.

I was so humiliated that Cody and the
police and EMTs had seen me naked, tied up and beaten. It felt like my fault; I
kept telling myself I was stupid to go out with Jason that night, since I knew
he was really mad. I’d just about convinced myself I got what I deserved when
Charity figured out what I was thinking and made me go to a counselor. She
helped me to get my head on straight, but I still couldn’t look Cody in the
eye. The others at least were professionals, but Cody was special. My first
true love.

I wasn’t sure whether the renewed feelings
I had for him were gratitude for what he’d done for me, or desperate wishes for
something we’d had and couldn’t have again. But one thing I was sure of was
that he couldn’t possibly look at me without seeing that awful sight I’d seen
in the police photographs. I looked like a whore, hanging by my arms with my
feet spread apart on that bar and bruises all over my naked body. He’d seen
that. He’d surely see it every time he looked at me if we got back together. So
I avoided him as much as possible.

When Jason’s defense attorney pinned him to
the wall with that question about sex with me, my head filled up with helium
and at the same time, my stomach dropped. All I could think about was they were
dragging him through a humiliating experience just to discredit me, and how
unfair was that? He didn’t answer for the longest time, and then he asked the
judge if he had to. It was so sweet that he wanted to protect me.

That’s when everything flipped. I started
staring at him until he felt it and caught my eye. I nodded. ‘
Tell them
’
I sent him mentally. ‘
You were the best, you’ve got nothing to be ashamed
of, and I don’t care who knows it.
’ He swallowed once, then said some of
the most beautiful words I’d ever heard from him. He got it! He understood what
had torn us apart, and not only that, but he regretted losing the kids, too.
“Someday I hope to again,” he said, looking into my eyes as if we were alone
instead of in a courtroom with dozens of other people. It wasn’t just
testimony, it was a promise.

I knew then that I’d never stopped loving
Cody. How do you stop loving someone, anyway? Either you never loved him in the
first place, or he’s done something so vile, so horrifying, that not even a
mother could love him. In the case of Jason, it was both. I knew I’d never
loved him. But even if I had, I couldn’t after what he’d done.

Cody, however, was still there, still in
love with me and had given up the rodeo. There was hope for us, I felt, if
only… If only a certain four-year-old hadn’t been bitten by a rattler and a
certain mom hadn’t had the poor judgment to put herself in harm’s way with a
sexual sadist. No matter what he felt for me, no matter what I felt for him, I
couldn’t saddle Cody with that debt. It was a hopeless feeling.

~~~

Cody didn
’t live at
Russ’s ranch any more. Actually, he lived at the ranch house I’d found for
their business. Russ made sure I got my license moved to another agency before
they closed on the sale, which had to be written up again because of that. But
it couldn’t go through otherwise. Because of his conviction on sex charges,
Jason’s license had been suspended and would likely be revoked. Anyway, I got a
nice commission out of it, but nowhere near enough to pay off the hospital
bill, even if Russ did insist I use it for that instead of to pay rent.

At dinnertime, though, more often than not,
Cody showed up. Charity explained that he didn’t really know how to cook, and
she’d invited him to continue to share meals at the ranch. He was going to have
to arrange something different, though, before much longer. It was nearly
winter, now, and the Wyoming weather didn’t care about a young man that
couldn’t fend for himself. Blizzards would keep him penned at his place,
sometimes for days.

After the trial, it was a little easier to
look at Cody, and I often found him staring at me across the table. Not in a
way that made me uncomfortable. He looked like he was trying to communicate
something to me. One evening, I signaled him to hold up in the kitchen when he
went to take care of his plate as usual.

“Cody, I’ve been thinking,” I said.

“Yeah? About me, I hope,” he grinned.

I looked up at him from under my eyelashes
and gave him what I hoped was a flirty smile. “Maybe,” I said. “Seriously,
Cody, what are you going to do when the snow flies? If you can’t get here to
eat, I mean.”

“Hadn’t given it much thought,” he said. “I
guess I’d better lay in some grub I can just heat up.”

“And who’s cleaning that big house for you?
Anyone?” I pressed.

“Aw, Annalee, it don’t need to be cleaned.
I mean, I ain’t there that much. I’m workin’ outside most of the time, just go
in to sleep and get up and have a bowl of cereal, then go back to work. It
don’t get that dirty.”

I felt a little sick at the thought of the
Wyoming sand that crept into every nook and cranny in this house, the state of
the bathrooms if he hadn’t cleaned them in the weeks he’d lived there, and the
dishes in the sink probably attracting roaches. “Cody Wayne, you can’t live
like that!” I exclaimed. “I’m coming over tomorrow to clean for you.”

He looked a little alarmed, but seeing the
determination on my face, gave in. “Okay. I’ll ask Janet for some grub to take
home for lunch for the two of us. Will you be bringin’ the kids?”

“I don’t think so,” I said. “I can get more
work done without them. I’ll ask Janey to watch them.”

What I was hoping was to nudge him into
asking me to stay. I’d be happy to cook and clean for him, and maybe, just
maybe, there’d come a time when I could think about him touching me without
remembering the last man that touched me. I couldn’t tell Cody that I still
loved him, not when I was so scared of sex. But if I could get over that, maybe
we could make a life.

The next day, I sweet-talked Janey into
watching Al and Tali all day, and borrowed a car from Russ to go over to the
little ranch. It was just a fifteen-minute drive from the Rocking W, just
barely enough time to wonder if they were ever going to name it anything but
the little ranch. When I got there, I found the door unlocked, but Cody was
nowhere in the house. I guessed he was out in the barn, so I went through the
house to survey the damage.

I was right about the bathrooms. They
looked like the whole crew had been using them, and that was probably the case.
I cleaned the basement first, starting with that bath. The bed in the bedroom
down there was bare, and there was no furniture at all in the family room. A
brand-new washer and dryer were in the laundry room. It looked like Cody was
furnishing one room at a time, as he could afford it. I went upstairs to see if
he needed any laundry done, and found the bed that was in use in the biggest of
the three bedrooms.

You couldn’t really call it a master
bedroom, because it was barely bigger than the other two, but it did have a
connection into the adjoining bathroom, with a closet on each side of the short
passageway. I found a heap of clothes in the floor of one closet, and several
plaid shirts hanging up in the other one. The easiest way to do this was going
to be to carry the whole pile over to the stairway and fling it downstairs,
then sort them in the laundry room. After getting the first load started, I
cleaned the upstairs bathroom and stripped the bed so I could wash the sheets.
The other two bedrooms had no furniture at all, so I just dust-mopped the
hardwood floors and went on to the kitchen.

I was right about dishes in the sink. Why
he didn’t stack them in the dishwasher until it was full I didn’t know. I
rinsed them all out and loaded the dishwasher. That’s when I realized it was
far too big for one person. He had a set of eight bowls, and even though every
one of them was dirty, the dishwasher wasn’t full. I pulled them out again and
washed up the dishes by hand, then went to check on the laundry. By the time
Cody came in to wash up for lunch, I had the house sparkling.

“Cody, this is a really cute little house.
You could fix it up nice,” I said, while we ate the sandwiches Janet had sent
over.

“Not much reason to, ‘less I had someone to
share it with,” he answered. His eyes were on mine when he said that, and I got
the feeling he was saying something else.

I decided to take the bull by the horns.
We’d spent too much time not communicating what we really needed to say. “Who
did you have in mind, Cody?”

His eyes narrowed. “Don’t play with me
Annalee,” he said. “You know I’ve never stopped havin’ feelin’s for you. Only
ones I want to share it with are you and the kids. I’m willin’ to wait, but
don’t play with me.”

My eyes filled with tears. “I didn’t mean
to play with you Cody. I’m sorry I’m such a mess, and I still have feelings for
you, too. But I’m not sure I’m ever going to be normal again. You know, for
bed.” I was embarrassed, and I was mad about it. I’d had such a fun
relationship with Cody before everything happened. We were never embarrassed
with each other. I hung my head, ashamed to look him in the eye.

Cody got up and came around the table to
me. He knelt beside me on the floor. “Sweetheart, it’ll all work out. If I have
feelin’s for you and you have feelin’s for me, it’ll be okay.”

“Oh, God, will it?” I wailed. “I can’t
stand the thought of anyone touching me, or touching anyone. It brings up all
the nasty things he did. Cody, I’m ruined. I’ll never be a proper wife to you.
I can’t ask you to keep loving me.”

Cody pulled me up out of the chair then,
and into his arms. He whispered, “Is this so bad?” I had to admit it wasn’t.
“No one asked me to keep lovin’ you, I just did. And no one’s gonna ask you to
do anything you can’t do. Ever.”

I gasped. No! He couldn’t give that up for
me. What if I never could again? Cody was stroking my hair, which was now
shoulder length and worn down. After that ghastly night, I’d had it cut as soon
as I could. To my surprise, I felt safe in his arms. I laid my head on his
chest and went quiet.

“Cody?”

“Hmm?” He seemed content to just hold me,
even though I’d just told him I couldn’t have sex.

“I asked Janey to keep the kids all night.
Could I, would it be okay if I just slept next to you? Would that be hard for
you?”

He muttered something I didn’t catch, and
then said, “No, honey, it would be okay. I’d love it.”

“What did you say before that?” I asked.

“Nothin’.”

“It was something Cody Wayne. I can’t even
try if you’re going to lie to me. I can’t be with a liar again,” I said, upset
now.

“You won’t like it,” he said mildly. I
started to push out of his arms. “Okay, okay. I said it would be hard for you.”

“Oh, you think so?” I challenged. Looking
up at him I saw an amused expression on his face.

“Yeah. It. You know
it
?
It
will be hard for you. Told you you wouldn’t like it,” he said as I narrowed my
eyes at him. But he didn’t seem at all contrite. I suppressed a snort of
amusement. Maybe this wouldn’t be so tough after all.

Cody went out to the barn for the afternoon
chores, and I busied myself dusting the living room shelves and furniture, then
baked a cake for our dessert. I had a chicken to roast for dinner, along with
some potatoes and the last of the green beans from the garden, too few to can
and too few to serve to the big family at the ranch.

~~~

I was nervous that night, not sure if I
wanted to risk my future with Cody if I had a nightmare. At the same time, I
was impatient to see if I could get my life back. Cody and I had both changed
in the five months since we’d been together. I was an emotional wreck because
of Jason Clark, and he had somehow become a grown man. I’d been able to be an
equal to the boy with the broken leg that I’d nursed back to health. Now he was
someone I could look up to and admire, though he never made me feel less than
his equal.

He was considerate, too. He let me go first
in the bathroom and made sure I was in bed and covered up before he came in.
“Are you sure about this, Annalee? I could sleep in the bed downstairs,” he
said.

“No, I’m not putting you out of your bed.
If anyone has to sleep down there, it’ll be me. I made the bed just in case.
But if you’re okay with it, I really want to see if I can do this,” I answered.

“Do what?” he said, low in his throat. His
eyes smoldered in the lamplight.

“Just sleep next to you, Cody. That’s all I
can handle, I think. Do you mind?” I felt bad even asking him. This was a bad
idea, that I hadn’t thought through.

“I don’t mind. Would you let me hold you?”
He was almost growling now. I couldn’t decide whether the flutters in my belly
were from fear or arousal. I seemed to remember them from months ago.