Playing With Fire

“Explain what? Why you just humiliated me in front of the sheriff by letting him believe a girl like me couldn’t satisfy a man with your reputation?”

He cringed and ran a hand over his face. “I didn’t mean to humiliate you. But that’s always what it’s going to come back to, isn’t it? My reputation. Well, you know what? That road of trust drives both ways, honey. It sure the hell didn’t take me much convincing on my part to get you to believe I wasn’t faithful to you, but like you said…with my reputation and all.” The sarcasm oozed from his voice.

“Don’t you dare throw my words back in my face. It’s not my fault you have a reputation as a playboy. What did you expect me to think?”

“I expect you to trust me. You should have at least given me the benefit of—” His cell phone buzzed on the nearby counter, so he lifted it and glanced at the screen. “I have to make a call. Can we argue about this when I get back?”

I nodded silently, feeling the awkwardness between us when he shifted his eyes away from me and headed toward the exit without so much as a good-bye. He swung the door open just as Dan filled the doorway, wearing a medical boot on his injured foot and lifting his hand to knock. When his knuckles only swept air, Cowboy chuckled and moved aside, allowing him entry.

Dan wasn’t the least bit amused as he tapped his cane back and forth on the floor and stepped inside. “Very fu

Cowboy looked back at me and gri

“Hi, Dan. How are you?” I asked loudly, letting him follow the sound of my voice.

He found the chair next to me and sat. “Stop yelling. I’m blind, not deaf.”

I coughed a little, which helped stifle my giggle. “How are you doing? You okay?”

“Fractured my ankle. Doc says I have to wear this fucking boot for a few weeks.” He gave me one of his big rotten-toothed grins. “Since they released me, I came to see how you fared with our death-defying leap out the window.”

“Actually, I didn’t jump from the hayloft. Apparently, there was an old ladder on the outside of the barn. That’s how I got out.”

The smile Dan wore melted. “What the fuck is wrong with you, girl?”

“I, uh…beg your pardon?”

He shook his head in disbelief. “You let a blind man leap out a fucking two-story window while you climbed safely down a ladder?”

I tried not to smirk, afraid that he would hear it in my tone. “No, no, you got it all wrong. The smoke overwhelmed me before I could make it out. That’s when I sort of stumbled upon the ladder. Had I known it was there, I never would have let you jump.”

I sat quietly as Dan recounted his harrowing “brush with death,” as he called it. I actually felt bad for the guy when he got to the part where he had to force himself to jump from the hayloft. Leaping out of a burning building would be frightening for anyone, but especially someone blind who couldn’t see how high up they were or what they might possibly land on. Thankfully, he landed feet-first in an unruly pile of brush—hence the “brush with death” part—which cushioned his fall. Otherwise, his injuries could’ve been more severe.

Dan finally got to the part where my ex-convict father found him and moved him away from the burning building. He said he told the man there was a woman still inside and the man went silent, like he’d disappeared. Guess that was when my father ran to the barn to locate me.

But why? After everything he took from me and after my testimony had put him in prison, why did he—

“Can I borrow your pisser?” Dan asked.

“Of course.”

He sat there quietly for a moment. “You go

“Oh, I’m sorry. The bathroom is directly behind your chair about five feet away.”

Dan rose and tapped his aluminum cane back and forth on the tile until he found the bathroom. He disappeared from sight just as a light knock sounded on the room door. I didn’t even have a chance to say “come in” before the large door pushed open and Mandy came into view.

She kept her eyes lowered as she approached my bedside. “I just wanted to apologize for my behavior,” she said, shaking her head furiously. “I didn’t mean to say anything. But I couldn’t stand by and let Cowboy get blamed for doing something we all know he didn’t do.”

I was still upset, but considered her words carefully before answering. She obviously hadn’t meant to cause any problems. And she had put her own ass on the line to keep him from becoming the sheriff’s number one suspect. “Thank you, Mandy,” I whispered, feeling like an idiot for not believing in Cowboy from the begi

“Always.” She offered me a sincere smile, but her brows quirked with confusion. “You know, you’re taking this a lot better than I thought you would.”

“It’s okay. Cowboy already told me he wasn’t with you. I understand why you would say that he was, though.”

“No, I don’t think you do. That’s not exactly—”

The bathroom door swung open and Mandy shot out of her chair, wheeling around, as Dan tapped his way into the room. She obviously hadn’t realized we weren’t alone. She moved out of his way and around to the opposite side of my bed, allowing Dan to reclaim the chair. Staring blankly at me, Mandy chewed on her bottom lip. As if she wanted to say something, but stopped herself from doing so.

A sharp stab of anxiety cut deep into the pit of my stomach. Had Cowboy lied to me? Was that what she was going to say? No. That couldn’t be it. No matter what he’d said earlier in front of the sheriff, I believed he was sincere when he said he hadn’t cheated on me. But the moment I got Mandy alone, I pla

The chair squeaked under Dan’s weight as he shifted to get comfortable. “You know, you might want to have the nurse get maintenance up here,” Dan said, leaning back in the chair. “The urinal in there is way too high.”

“Um, Dan, there isn’t a urinal in there.”

“Huh. Well, then you might want to have someone give your sink a good scrubbing before you use it then.”

My face must’ve warped with a horrified expression because Mandy giggled out loud.

Startled by the sound of a different voice, Dan sat a little straighter. “You got company or something?”

“It’s Mandy Barlow. She came by to…check on me,” I explained, though I was pretty sure her reason for stopping in had more to do with what she’d started to say before Dan returned from the bathroom and stopped her.

Sheriff Wells stepped back inside the room, interrupting my train of thought. “Pardon me, Miss Weber, but since we’re ru

“Guess that’s my cue to leave,” Dan stated, rising from the chair next to my bed.

“No, Dan, why don’t you stay?” the sheriff asked him. “I’ll need you to corroborate her statement.”

“Okay, then,” he agreed. “I’ll just get out of the way.” He tapped his cane and walked around to the opposite side of my bed until he bumped into Mandy’s shoulder. “Sorry about that. Didn’t hear you standing there.” He gri

“Oh, I don’t wear perfume,” Mandy told him. “You’re probably smelling my apple body mist.” She looked at me and I gri

Dan’s mouth tightened into a firm, thin line. “No, that’s not it,” he mumbled.

The sheriff took the seat Dan had vacated and focused his attention on me. “All right, Miss Weber, let’s go through this one more time. What happened after you woke up in the barn?”