Rescued by a Rugged Heart (Preview)

Prologue

It was so cold in the corridor, Samantha Barnaby, who was eleven years old and called “Sami” by pretty much everyone, shivered and wrapped her arms around herself for warmth.

The environment of the hospital was unwelcoming. Her aunt Jacquelyn sat next to her, as tense as ever, offering no love or comfort to Sami. The ceilings of the stone building were so high, Sami wondered if it was built when they allowed horses in the hospital. It was three stories high, but this corridor had a ceiling that was as high as the third floor. That was a really long way.

Sami shivered again, dropping her eyes to look to the left and the right. Rolling metal stands were parked outside of several doors, holding supplies like towels and tissues and extra syringes in case one was needed in an emergency. Sami didn’t know what else was on the carts. She wasn’t allowed off the bench until her father came out of the surgery room. He was in there with her mother.

Her mother was giving birth. She’d heard a lot of screaming for a while but now she heard nothing. Not the sound of a baby cry or any adult voices marveling at the beauty of the little creature. Not that she knew what to expect. She’d never been in a place like this before.

Well, she had. But that would have been when she was born and she didn’t remember that.

The corners of her lips quivered as she tried to contain her smile. Aunt Jacquelyn would say she was a very inappropriate girl and might give her a smack. She didn’t like to be smacked so she rarely said anything at all to her aunt. She never knew what would offend the woman. Best not to say anything at all. Or to ask any questions.

And certainly not to smile in a hospital.

Aunt Jacquelyn tapped her foot impatiently, mumbling, “Where the devil is that man? What are they doing in there?”

These questions weren’t meant for Sami. She knew that. So she said nothing and stayed still, staring down the hallway with the back of her head to her aunt.

The tapping continued. Aunt Jacquelyn sighed heavily. Sami wished her father would come out so she didn’t have to worry anymore. It was best to keep Aunt Jacquelyn up on any information she was seeking. Her temper would boil over at any moment.

Suddenly, the two double doors leading into the surgery blasted open as if an elephant was coming through. Startled, Sami jumped to her feet, spinning around to see what was going on. She gasped when she saw it was her father. He was covered in blood all down the front of his surgical gown. He had elbow-length gloves on and they were also smeared with blood.

She lifted her gaze to her father’s face and even without knowing what to expect, she could see something was terribly wrong.

“Papa?” She spoke breathlessly. She couldn’t think of anything else to say.

He didn’t respond. He stared at her a moment and then moved away, his face as red as could be. He broke into a run, leaving her behind.

“Papa!” she called after him as a swarm of nurses emerged from the operating room.

“What happened!” Aunt Jacquelyn demanded. She sounded like she was about to explode. When she did, Sami didn’t want to be around.

She attempted to run into the operating room where she knew her mother was, but she was blocked by the four hands of two of her father’s nurses.

“Oh no, honey, you can’t go in there!” one of the nurses said.

“But my mama is in there and I want to talk to her.”

The nurse grabbed her and pulled her into a tight hug. “Your mama is in no shape for you to be seeing her right now, my dear. The other doctor is with her. She’s in the best hands she can be right now. We just have to wait and see.”

“But what about my baby brother or sister?”

Sami didn’t understand. Nothing bad could have happened to her mother. There was no way. She tried to see around the nurse, but the woman spun her around so she faced the other side of the hallway. High up on the walls were windows she wouldn’t be able to reach for some years to come, if ever. They seemed a mile away. The light coming in through those windows bathed her Aunt Jacquelyn in a wide spotlight.

She was spitting her words like nails, her anger cutting through the fabric of time and space.

“You murderer!” she was screaming, rocking back and forth with the force of her words. As she yelled, she jabbed her accusing finger in the air at the retreating back of Sami’s father. “You killed her! This is your fault! You hear me, Joseph Barnaby? You’re a murderer! I curse the day you met my sister!”

The nurse who’d been holding her finally clapped both hands over Sami’s ears. It was too late, though. She felt the hate emanating from her aunt and drew away from it, lowering her head.

Her papa wasn’t a murderer. He wouldn’t have killed anyone. She didn’t understand why Aunt Jacquelyn was so upset. It wasn’t her mother they were talking about. That was impossible.

The other nurse was trying to get Aunt Jacquelyn to stop screaming and to calm down. Sami heard a few more choice words before the nurse got forceful and the two ran off down the corridor in the direction her papa had gone.

The nurse with her hands over Sami’s ears abruptly pulled them away and bolted around the short corner, following them.

Sami took a few steps forward and turned to watch them disappearing down the long hallway. She blinked several times before she slowly turned to the door of the operating room.

A chill passed over her, and she shivered. The hospital corridor sure was cold.

Chapter One

Sami pulled back her long auburn hair, tying it with the ribbon she’d been clutching between her teeth. The summer sun was waning. It would soon be fall and all the leaves would make a blanket on their land, leaving the trees to look like skeletons with multiple arms stretching out on all sides.

She straightened up when sweat from her forehead dripped dangerously close to her eye. She whipped off a glove and grabbed the hand towel from the loop on her pants where she stored it. Mopping her brow, Sami glanced over at the front porch. Her blood ran cold when she saw Derek Bancroft, the mayor of their hometown, Rascal Flats, New Mexico, standing there, talking to her father, Joseph.

Sami always got a bad feeling when that man was around. She didn’t like the smug look on his round face. He was short and stocky, with piercing brown eyes that were almost as black as the pepper in his salt-and-pepper hair. It didn’t make sense that he’d managed to get the votes to become mayor. She didn’t find him particularly charming.

She’d finished distributing the hay evenly on the ground, watching till the mayor left their house, walking to his black buggy with small flags on all four corners that whipped in the wind as he rode away.

“What did he want?” she asked, dabbing her forehead with the handkerchief. She studied her father for a moment. She’d noticed how downtrodden he had been in the last few weeks.

He lifted a paper in his hands and shook it in the air. “We’re in debt to him now. We’re going to have to work as hard as we can to pay this off as quick as we can.”

Sami frowned. “He loaned us money? Pa…”

He shook his head, stopping her words. “Had to do it, Sami. I showed you the books. There’s no one else who can help us.”

Sami sighed, walking past him into the house, where it was cooler and not so muggy. “I just wish we could have gotten the money from someone else. I don’t trust him, Pa. I really don’t.”

She looked over her shoulder to see her father had narrowed his eyes, watching the buggy leave their property.

“Neither do I,” was her father’s quiet reply. “Neither do I.”

***

Two years into their loan, Sami and her father busily fed the remaining cattle they had on their land. She’d noticed a shift in the last six months. She could only stand idly by as her father began selling off the cattle and some of the farming equipment, leaving the secondhand, sometimes broken pieces for them to use.

When her father first secured the loan, he’d put nearly every penny into restoring the farm to what it once had been. Unfortunately, as she grew older, Sami realized her father wasn’t very good at running a business. He didn’t have a head for numbers, nor did he have the personality to successfully say no when he should. That came to hiring and firing as well as making financial decisions.

Sami didn’t judge him harshly, though. She didn’t know how to run the farm’s finances either, as she’d never been taught. It did seem to her that getting ten thousand dollars from the mayor should have propelled them into success without them having to really try.

Her father wasn’t a gambling man, nor was he materialistic. He didn’t want luxuries and wealth. He wanted a successful farm that brought food to the masses, paid his bills, and gave them a good life. Nothing more.

Sami loved her father, but she wished he had hired an accountant.

It was clear they were struggling, and the only reason that could be was that her pa just wasn’t a businessman. He hadn’t been raised on a farm. He was a doctor. That was the kind of work he could do without a problem, but he had given up medicine after the death of her mother.

As they worked, Sami tried to stay close to him. They didn’t have a lot of time together so when they were working side by side, she always tried to engage him in conversation.

“I know what we can do to pass the time while we’re working,” she said after a pause in their conversation.

He gave her an amused look. “I bet I know what you’re thinking, too.”

Sami grinned, letting out a soft laugh. “And what would that be?”

“You want a story,” was his reply.

“But what story?” she emphasized, knowing he already knew what she was talking about.

“Leo. When I saved Leo.”

“That’s right. I love that story, Pa. Tell it to me one more time.”

“You know it so well, you could tell it yourself. I get tired of it. Why don’t you tell it to me this time?”

Sami discovered in that moment that she truly did want to tell it to her father. So he’d know just how much she’d been listening over the years.

“You were coming back from your university in Denver where you were attending a conference, right? You saw a man leaning against a tree and stopped to help him. Because he looked like he’d been beaten up. I’ve always wondered if you ever thought of your own safety then? You didn’t know that he was a bandit with a reputation for robbing people and was wanted by the law. You just stopped and helped him. But the people who beat him up could have been lurking nearby and jumped you, too. Weren’t you afraid?”

Her father grinned and stopped what he was doing to lean on the shovel handle. “You’ve asked that before. I didn’t think about myself in the moment, though thinking back, I don’t remember there being very many places they could have hidden. I was safe the whole time because I had my eyes open. Leo just needed to be treated with kindness. That’s why things ended up the way they did.”

Sami nodded. “Yeah, I reckon so. You took him back to your house and fixed him up and let him stay in the barn. Then you took him the forty miles home when he was well enough to make the trip. That should qualify you for sainthood, Pa!”

He laughed, but Sami had always been impressed by her father’s compassion. If only he had as much financial sense as he did kindness, they would be very wealthy and not constantly in the red.

“Mr. Barnaby!”

Sami turned to see the foreman of their ranch, Gavin Andrews, riding up at a rapid pace.

Chapter Two

Sami went to the barn and leaned the rake she’d been using against it, taking off her gloves and tucking them under one arm while she rinsed her hands at the pump faucet sticking out of the ground. She looked over at Gavin as he slid out of the saddle and approached them.

He looked stressed.

This wasn’t a new expression for Gavin. He was as aware of the financial troubles as she was. He wasn’t in a decision-making role, but ever since her father had asked Gavin to only work part time and let go of two of the four farmhands they had employed, Gavin had made it clear he knew what the problem was.

“What is it, Gav?” her father asked.

Gavin shook his head as he took a few more steps toward them. “Big Charlie’s comin’ with the mayor,” he warned. “I told ya this was gonna happen, Joe. He’s got a lotta people in his debt and he’s been callin’ the money in. I told ya it wouldn’t take long for him to get to you.”

Sami’s eyes darted to her father. He had said nothing about the loan from the mayor being called in. In fact, he hadn’t mentioned the mayor in months.

Had he stopped making payments? A cold chill ran down her spine.

“That don’t make sense,” her pa was saying, his voice tense. “We still got three years left on the loan.”
“He don’t care about that. It’s what I’ve been trying to tell you for weeks. You gotta start listenin’, friend. He’s comin’, and he’s gonna demand his money back early.”

Sami’s heart thumped hard in her chest. She might have been young and inexperienced when her father signed the loan document, but she’d learned a lot in the last two years.

“He signed a five-year contract on that loan,” she pointed out, her voice hardened with anger. Her ire wasn’t directed at Gavin, though. She had no doubt he was correct in saying the mayor would be calling in the loan early. But the document was signed by them both, and it stipulated the loan was a five-year payback.

And they had three years left, just like her father said.

Gavin looked at her, nodding. “Yeah, but there’s some kind of loophole he’s been using with everyone else. He must have put the same clause in on yours. You ever been more than a day late on a payment?”

Sami’s eyes moved to her father. She wasn’t the one paying it back—her father was the only one who knew the answer to that question. He didn’t have to say anything, though. She could tell by the look on his face.

Gavin clearly didn’t need an answer either. “That’s all it takes. There’s a line in the contract that says more than a twenty-four-hour delay on one payment lets him demand full payment back whenever he wants.”

Her father’s shoulders slumped. “I need a drink.”

He turned on his heel, letting his shovel fall to the ground. Gavin walked by his side as they went to the house. He was talking excitedly, his hands gesturing wildly.

“There’s gotta be something we can do to stop him, Joe. There’s got to be. Me and the others have been talkin’, tryin’ to find out what’s makin’ him call in the loans. It don’t make sense. Unless he’s wantin’ the money so he can leave Rascal Flats. Maybe he don’t wanna be mayor anymore. Maybe he’s gettin’ ready to move to the big city.”

“By leavin’ a bunch of property behind? I don’t think he’s moving.”

Sami listened as she followed them into the house. She didn’t say anything. What could she have contributed to the conversation other than whining about not wanting to lose her home? She’d worked at her father’s side without any real goals of her own all her life.

She was only concerned about making her pa a happy man. He’d lost his beloved wife, his career had spiraled into the ground, and he’d made poor choices when it came to planting crops and running his farm. The only good thing he really had was her. His daughter, so willing to do anything he asked if it made him happy.

They stayed in the foyer when they entered the house. Sami passed them, headed for the kitchen. She would get them all a nice glass of lemonade.

When she returned to the foyer, they had moved to the sitting room. It had one window facing the pathway up to the house so they would see when the mayor came along.

Her father looked at the lemonade when she set it in front of him. He smiled at her. “Would you be a dear and pour me a couple shots of whiskey, please?”

Sami lifted one side of her lips in a crooked smile. “Oh, that’s what you meant by a drink?”

He chuckled. “Yes.”

“Sure, Pa.”

He and Gavin continued their conversation while she poured him a double shot and, after glancing at Gavin, who shook his head, brought it back to the couch where he sat. He thanked her again, and she sat down facing them in a lone chair with no cushioning. She’d always found the chair to be uncomfortable, but it had the best view of the window.

While Gavin told her and her father about a family in Rascal Flats the mayor had recently “threatened with homelessness,” Sami kept her eyes on the pathway. When she saw the two horsemen turn onto the drive from the main road and head toward the house, she interrupted him.

“There he is,” she said, pointing and standing up at the same time. Moving her eyes to her father, she asked, “Do you want me to tell him you’re busy?”

“No, just let him in, dear,” her father said, shaking his head. “Better that we’ve been prepared than turn him away so he can come and haunt us unexpectedly.”

Sami nodded. She stayed where she was for a moment or two longer, not wanting to look like she was waiting by the door. Or maybe she should be waiting by the door? Maybe she should answer his knock with a scowl on her face, now that she knew what he was there for?

Sighing and resigning herself to being respectful because that was what her father would want, she went out into the foyer and waited for his knock. When it came, she still jumped as if she hadn’t been standing there waiting for it. He’d made her feel tense and uneasy just knowing he was coming.

She waited a moment, calming herself down and smoothing the frown from her face. She opened the door, unable to go so far as to make herself smile.

“Good afternoon,” she said, blocking the entryway with her body. She wasn’t about to just let him waltz in like he owned the place. He didn’t… yet.

He did look a bit surprised by her solid stance but smiled at her anyway. “Good afternoon, Miss Samantha. I’m here to see your father. Is he available?”

She wanted to tell him to cut out the act, she wasn’t fooled. Instead, she nodded and, taking another pause, she stepped back, opening the door to him. Behind him, she had to look up to acknowledge Big Charlie, one of the local men who was strong and tall, the perfect bodyguard. He was one of the lumberjacks who’d helped her father build one of the storage buildings on their property. That was when she was much younger, right after they’d lost her mother and the baby she’d been carrying.

Now, he spent most of his time in the town hall, making sure no one went in and shot the mayor dead. That was what Sami assumed his job was, anyway. She was best acquainted with Big Charlie’s daughter, Charlene—“little Charlie,” whom she’d attended school with. Before she finished school, Little Charlie had contracted some kind of illness and her social time was limited after that.

Thinking about her old friend eased the hard feelings Sami had been building up in her mind.

“They’re in the sitting room.” Her voice was softer when she spoke, and the mayor had his bodyguard’s daughter to thank for it. Not that he was even thinking along those lines.

“They?” Mayor Bancroft turned his head, narrowing his eyes at her.

Sami nodded, responding with, “My father and the ranch foreman,” before she wondered why he had asked it like that—as if her father needed to be alone.

When she followed the two men into the sitting room, she noticed her father had refilled his whiskey glass. She hurried to take a more comfortable chair, leaving the uncomfortable one for the mayor. Charlie wouldn’t sit. He would stand behind wherever the mayor was standing or sitting and glare at whoever the mayor was talking to.

“How is Little Charlie?” she asked, using a kind voice when she spoke. “Good, I hope?”

Big Charlie’s face changed when he looked at her. He’d had a face of stone that melted when their eyes met. “She’s responding well to treatment,” he said. “Thank you for asking.”

“I’m so glad to hear that. Please tell her I miss her. She was always smiling and fun to be around.”

“Now that the niceties are over,” the mayor cut in, looking at her with a disgusted expression before turning to her father and Gavin with an air of self-importance that made Sami sick to her stomach, “I’m afraid I have some bad news, Joseph. We’re going to need to settle the contract payment in full much sooner than expected. In ten days, actually. The loan will be due in full in ten days.”

Sami truly felt sick to her stomach in that moment. There was simply no way for them to do it.

Chapter Three

Sami paced back and forth in the kitchen. She’d had to excuse herself. The look on her father’s face was enough to drive her from the room altogether. She didn’t want to watch him beg. She could hear him and that was enough.

Once upon a time, her father had been happy. He’d been a man who possessed everything he could ever want—a successful business, a lovely wife and daughter, and a big, beautiful farmhouse with well-paid, happy workers as employees. Everything had been destroyed by the death of her mother. The loss of both wife and son had driven her father halfway to madness, and the ire and rebuke of her mother’s family was like the last nail in the coffin.

Her father had lost everything when her mother died. He hadn’t meant to lose his way.

Sami knew he loved her, even though she wasn’t enough to make up for so much loss. He treasured her, almost to the point Sami felt like she would have to live with him forever just to make sure he was never lonely. So far, she’d only been enamored once, and that was just a flash in the pan.

She would stay with her father forever, if that was what made him happy. Even if she got married, her husband would just have to accept living at the farmhouse with her father. They would be inseparable.

The thought sent a streak of panic through her. What if there was no farmhouse for them to live in? What if the mayor succeeded in taking everything they owned and kicking them out with only the clothes on their backs?

The very thought made her feel nauseated. She placed one hand on her stomach and the other on the windowsill, leaning forward and concentrating on breathing slowly. This couldn’t be happening. They just couldn’t lose their home to this arrogant upstart.

Sami didn’t want to acknowledge that her father had played a big part in this. They were struggling even after the loan and she didn’t know why.

The only way she would ever understand it would be to confront her father and demand he tell her what was going on and how they had gotten into this predicament.

When she heard the front door open and close hard, she knew the mayor and Big Charlie were gone. Pulling in a deep breath, she left the kitchen and went straight to the sitting room. She would demand answers from her father right then and there.

But the look on her his face when she entered the sitting room stopped her from speaking right away. Instead, she went to the couch and sat on the side of her father opposite from Gavin. The foreman was leaning forward, his head in both hands, which were covering his ears.

Her father followed her with his eyes and took her hands when she sat down.

“I’m sorry you’re having to go through this with me, my dear. I suppose you understand what just happened. He’s given us ten days to get the money to pay him off.”

“This is what he’s been doing to everyone!” Gavin said mournfully. “He didn’t even offer ten days to some people.”

“I don’t feel special,” her father snapped. He took a breath and glanced at Gavin apologetically, not that Gavin noticed. “I’m sorry, friend. I didn’t mean that to sound so harsh.”

“I know,” Gavin replied without lifting his head or looking at her father.

“Pa, how can he get away with this? There’s got to be some way around it. What he’s doing has to be illegal. Our land is worth much more than the remainder of the loan.”

“There’s one thing he doesn’t know.”

The way her father spoke lit up a tiny flame of hope inside her. Gavin must have heard the same thing she did because he turned his head and looked at her father curiously. The smile on her father’s face made that flame of hope burn higher.

“Don’t keep us in suspense, Joe,” Gavin remarked.

“Well, it’s… it’s good and it’s bad. When he first gave us the loan, I put half of it aside, you see. I didn’t use it all. I kept half in a safe and held onto it.”

“That’s good thinking ahead, Pa!” Sami was proud, smiling at him.

“It sure was,” Gavin agreed, nodding and sitting up a little.

“Thank you for your votes of confidence,” her pa said. He shook his head. “That still leaves us owing him several thousand dollars, and nothing I could sell or do in ten days will get me that much money. I’d have to rob a bank and I have no plans to do that.”

“No, you can’t do that. You’d end up in jail and I would be homeless and scared to death.” Sami knew full well her father was no criminal. If he was, they wouldn’t have needed a loan from the mayor in the first place. “There’s got to be a reason he’s asking for everyone’s money at the same time. Does he want to empty out Rascal Flats? He’d be the mayor of a town with no citizens in it. That can’t be what he wants.”

“You know, that’s a good point. The only predictable thing Mayor Bancroft does is when it involves making money. By extending loans with interest, he gets more in the long run. Why would he call in his debts now? What is he doing this for?”

Sami pressed her lips together before speaking. “I think we should find out. I want to know what he’s planning. And I don’t want to lose my home, so if he’s doing something illegal, we can expose him before it’s too late.”

“I don’t know what you’re thinking of doing, Sami, but you’re not going anywhere or doing anything dangerous.”

Sami shook her head at her father. “You won’t lose me, Pa. I promise. I’ll be discreet in my inquiries. Gavin will do all the leg work. Right, Gav?” She grinned at the foreman, who smiled back.

“That’s right, Sami,” he agreed heartily.