“For…what?”
“I’ve watched you, since she showed up. You’ve come alive in a way I haven’t seen since you had to grow up in a hurry to step into your father’s shoes.” She smiled widely. “And that kiss I walked in on just proves me—and Cody—right. So I’m very glad she is who she said she is, and that I like her.”
She picked up her e-reader again and went back to her book. Still smiling. As if everything that needed to be said had been said.
While her eldest son sat there, stunned.
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Sydney watched as Lucas sat on the ground outside the dog run and talked continuously to the battered Malinois. The dog had moved—in a hopping sort of motion, because of his missing front leg—from standing six feet away. He’d inched closer as the boy went on, until now he was sitting a bare foot on the other side of the fence, watching intently and still warily, but clearly fascinated.
Keller’s brother stood just a few feet away, never taking his eyes off the pair despite the sturdy fence between them. He had told her the animal’s story, that he’d been injured, and his handler killed by a suicide bomber who had detonated when cornered. The agency that brought him home had worked with him for a year, without much luck.
“He couldn’t bite him through that fence, could he?”
Chance didn’t look at her, but answered. “No. But I don’t want him trying to go over that fence.”
Her eyes widened as she stared at the chain link that had to be at least five feet tall. “Could he? Even with only three legs?”
“I don’t think so, but he’s compensated for that pretty well.”
“He has,” the boy said, confirming both Chance’s words and that he’d been listening even as he talked to the dog. “I can’t believe they were going to just…kill him.”
Sydney’s breath caught. Her gaze snapped back to Chance. “They were going to euthanize him? After how he served, and being hurt like that?”
The man only nodded without looking at her, keeping his eyes on boy and dog.
“Chance talked them out of it, then drove all night to get him,” Lucas said. Then he gave Chance a look over his shoulder, with a shy smile. “He does really well for a tripod.”
“He does fine. Figure out a name for him yet?” the man asked.
“Yeah,” Lucas said, this time grinning at Chance. “I think we should call him Tri.”
“For Tripod?” Sydney asked.
Lucas glanced at her, but only for a moment before looking back at Chance. “And for try. Because he keeps trying.”
“Good idea.” Chance smiled at the boy. It transformed his face, from stern, forbidding, and haunted to something much more striking.
“Those Rafferty genes,” she muttered to herself.
The boy went back to chattering to the fascinated dog, and Sydney looked at the man beside her. “He had a name already, didn’t he? In the service?”
He didn’t respond right away, as if he was considering what to answer—or perhaps whether to answer at all—but after a moment he said, “He associates that name with that job. Most of these dogs do. I’m experimenting with giving them new names so that association isn’t triggered.”
“That makes sense.”
“Mm.”
He still wouldn’t look at her. Finally she said, almost sadly, “You don’t trust me, do you.”
Finally he glanced at her. “Don’t take it personally. I don’t trust anyone.”
Something in his eyes, eyes that were the same blue as his mother’s, made her think of a weariness so vast she doubted she could comprehend it.
“Anyone? Not even your family?”
His expression softened then. “They’re not just anyone.”
“No. No, they’re not.” It came out with the heartfelt fervency of someone who had never known this kind of family. And after a long, silent moment, Chance gave a short, sharp nod.
“You don’t do him any damage,” he said quietly, with a nod at Lucas, “and we’re good.”
So even this most taciturn of Raffertys was on Lucas’s side.
“I’m here because I want what he had and lost, and I never had.”
“So I heard.” He stared at her for a moment, and it was so piercingly intense she wondered why on earth she’d wished the man would look at her. “Keller’s more than my brother. He’s the one who helped our mother hold us together after our father was killed. I was only a year younger, but I couldn’t do it. Couldn’t even face that Dad was gone. Keller did. He gave up his dreams for us. You hurt him and I’ll come after you like a Texas twister.”
She nearly gaped at him. He knew? This man who barely seemed part of the Rafferty clan knew how she felt about his brother? She truly had betrayed herself, then.
But she was nearly as shocked by the outpouring as by what he’d said. “When,” she asked, “was the last time you said so much at once?” She saw surprise flicker in his eyes. Then a cooler calculation. “Should I feel honored, or frightened?”
And finally, the lightest twitch at the corners of his mouth. But “I begin to see,” was all he said. And she was left wondering just how obvious she’d been about her attraction to Keller Rafferty.
“You did wonderfully with…Tri,” she said to Lucas when they got back to the main house some time later, after the boy had, somewhat reluctantly and with some prodding, shown her a few places he liked on the ranch.
Lucas began to loosen the cinch of the saddle on the bay horse he said was named Pecos, but he gave her a sideways glance. “He’s going to be a good dog. Once he knows he’s safe.”
“I know.” She began to do the same with the sweet Latte, who accepted her still somewhat unpracticed efforts with equanimity. “He’s just confused about what he’s supposed to be now.”
He seemed to consider that. Then, slowly, he nodded. “Yeah.”
“Kind of like me right now.”
That startled him into looking straight at her. “You?”
She nodded. “I know what I want to be, but I don’t know if that’s what you want.”
“You mean my cousin?”
“I am your cousin,” she said. “What I want to be is part of your life.”
“But…my uncle doesn’t.”
“Lucas,” she said wryly, “he doesn’t even want to be part of my life.”
Lucas looked away and went back to his task, but even from here she could sense the renewed tension in him. After a moment she spoke again, making her tone as offhand as she could.
“Do you think it’s better to have no parents, or parents who don’t want you?”
Without looking at her he muttered, “Don’t know.”
“My parents lied to me all my life because it was easier for them. Yours…for a long time your father really thought he was dead, Lucas. It was the truth as far as they knew when they first told you. So maybe they thought it would be easier if they just left it that way. Maybe they didn’t tell you so you wouldn’t think you had relatives who didn’t care enough to even meet you. To spare you from being hurt. To protect you. Something mine would never make the effort to do.”
He had that look on his face again, the one she’d come to know meant he was thinking, figuring things out. Which was a lot better than rejecting her and everything she said out of hand.
Very carefully, she went on softly. “I think it’s better to have had parents who loved you completely, even if you only had them for a while, than to have parents who saw you as just another piece of baggage to lug around and are now glad to be rid of you.”
Lucas didn’t answer right away, since he was busy pulling the saddle off Pecos and slinging it over the top fence rail. But then he turned and looked at her.
“Maybe you were just born to the wrong parents.”
She blinked. Then, slowly, smiled. “I think you may be right. I’d have been a lot better off if I’d been born to yours. And then I’d have a cool little brother instead of a cool cousin.”
Lucas looked away quickly, but not before she saw the slightest of smiles cross his face. And for the first time since she’d found him, she dared to hope this was going to work out.
*
Keller was glad he’d stopped inside the tack room door when they’d ridden up. He felt a twinge of guilt at eavesdropping, but decided it had been worth it.
She had handled that…well, wonderfully. And he could not deny the pure emotion in her voice as she spoke to Lucas. And Keller knew she’d meant everything she’d said. She’d tracked him down, come here from the other side of the world practically, for a boy she’d never met, never even known about.
He waited until Lucas hefted the saddle and headed for the tack room with it, then stepped outside as if he’d heard nothing. He cleared the doorway for the boy, who headed for the rack they’d chosen for him because it was low enough for him to properly slide the saddle onto it. Short term they weren’t above leaving them adorning the fence, but when they were done for the day they were properly cared for.
He walked to where Sydney was brushing Latte, even though it didn’t appear he needed it anymore. But the big, gentle paint was dozing in utter bliss. Like I would be if she was working on me like that.
He gave himself an inward shake. One kiss and he was out of control? He forced himself to sound casual as he came up to her. “Have a good ride?”
She stopped, looked at him, and gave him a smile so wide it was hotter than the now-June sun. “Yes. Lucas was wonderful with the dog, and then he showed me the pond, and the cave, and the tower.”
He smiled at that; the boy loved swimming or at least splashing in the pond when the water was high enough, was fascinated by the cave and the tower, both features of a huge outcropping of the local limestone. “All his favorite places, huh?”
“Yes.” She took in a deep breath and said, “I can’t thank you, all of you, enough for what you’ve done for him. Taking him in, giving him a home. He told me he thought…” She paused, swallowed, then went on. “Before you found him, he thought he’d probably die soon. That he wanted to. To be with them.”
“I figured.”
Those golden eyes fixed on him. “You understood, didn’t you? You knew how he felt because you’d been there.”
His jaw tightened; even now the memories of that old, always-carried agony sawed at him. “I recognized that kind of pain.”
“But you still went on, because your mother, your brothers needed you.”
He shrugged because he didn’t know what to say—he never did when that came up.
“That’s what I want with Lucas. That kind of feeling, of caring.” She gave him a smile that looked wistful. “In a way, I have more to learn than he does.”
He felt the ache he was almost used to now, thinking about how she’d grown up. But he had to think of Lucas now, so said only, “Hard to pull that off and travel the world at the same time.”
“I told you, I’m calling a halt to the traveling. That phone call I was on at the inn the other day, when you arrived? I was talking to my assistant buyer. She’s taking over the next buying trip.”
“Taking over?”
She nodded. “I’ve been prepping her for a while. If this goes well, she can take that over entirely. And I can stay and build something with Lucas.”
He blinked. Realized he should have known she’d already taken steps. Hadn’t he just been thinking about her sincerity? “What about your business?”
“The joy of the Internet. I can run it from anywhere.” She made a sweeping gesture that seemed to include not just the countryside around them, but the ranch house and the barns and everything that was the Rafferty home place. “You have no idea how long I’ve yearned for a place like this.”
And Keller had to rein himself in before his mind ran riot with images of her meaning and wanting just that, not to simply be here with Lucas, but in this specific place, with all of them.
With him.
Chapter Thirty
“How’s his homework going?”
Sydney looked over at Maggie Rafferty with a smile. “Okay. I think I was able to help him a little with that report on volcanoes.”
“Let me guess, you’ve climbed one?” Keller’s question sounded as much amused as anything, so she didn’t get defensive as she sometimes did when the subject of her other life—her past life, she’d begun to think of it as—came up. Instead she grinned and said, “As a matter of fact…”
This had been the most amazing two weeks of her life. Two weeks since she’d spent that first day with Lucas, since he’d given her that very tentative bit of hope by saying maybe she’d been born into the wrong family.
She’d come to the ranch every day to see him, and every day she could feel his resistance lessening even more. More than once she’d come early, before he was out of school, at Maggie’s—she was finally able to think of her by first name alone—suggestion, so they could talk about the ongoing process of getting Lucas to accept her as family.
At the same time, she began to understand just how much work was involved in keeping this place running. Maggie worked harder than any woman Sydney had ever known, and there were a handful of ranch hands, but the bulk of the work and the responsibility rested on Keller’s broad shoulders. And she had the thought that if Lucas needed to learn about all those things—responsibility, hard work, and taking care of things—he could not be in a better place.
But Keller hadn’t kissed her again. In fact, she’d barely seen him. He seemed to be making himself as absent as possible when she was around. She’d arrive, he’d send Lucas on some task, and she’d go with the boy. And no matter how much she told herself it was so she and Lucas could bond, some small part of her insisted it was because for him it had been nothing like what it had been for her. That he didn’t want to be that close to her again.
When you want to be closer still.
She was lost—as she too often was—in that thought when she heard a commotion from the back of the house. Cody Rafferty nearly ran into the kitchen, Lucas at his heels. He said sharply, “Where’s Keller? He’s not answering his phone.”
Good question.
“I’m not sure, at this exact moment, but he’s probably out where there’s no signal,” Maggie said. “What’s wrong?”
“I just looked at the cam in the brood stall. I think Bonnie’s water broke.”
Maggie leapt up. “It’s early.”
“I know.”
The older woman spun on her heel and ran for the door. Sydney followed, on some level registering a hope that she would be able to move like that in thirty years. Cody and Lucas beat them outside, and they all headed for the big barn at a run. Sydney remembered what Keller had told her, that the buckskin mare with the distinctive black points was a direct descendant of their father’s beloved buckskin stallion who had died two years ago. Clearly she was very important to them.
When they got there it seemed to Sydney the horse was struggling. She was up and down, breathing hard and pacing. But she knew nothing about equine pregnancies, so didn’t know if this was normal. She vaguely noticed the camera up in one corner of the stall. The stall itself was larger than the ones they’d run past, she guessed in anticipation of the new arrival. Maggie knelt beside the animal, speaking soothingly to her.
“Lucas, come here and talk to her,” Maggie said. The boy immediately knelt beside the horse’s head and began to talk, in much the same way he had to the edgy Malinois. “Cody, find Keller.”
“I’ll send the message drone up,” Cody said quickly.
“Could he be out at Chance’s?” Sydney asked, remembering that there was no reception out there; Keller had said he suspected that was one reason his brother had chosen the site. “He said something about testing a dog with a small herd or something.”
“Could be,” Maggie said. “Cody, try there first. Sydney, will you go interrupt Rylan, tell him we need to find Keller ASAP?”
“Of course.”
; As she left the big barn and ran for the smaller one, she thought about how right she’d been when she’d thought about most of the responsibility for everything that kept this place going falling on Keller’s shoulders. Because it was obvious that everyone, even his mother, turned to him in an emergency. And once more she wondered, with no small amount of sadness, what it must be like to have that kind of man around.
She’d half expected Rylan to resent being interrupted; she’d had some experience with temperamental types. But the moment she mentioned it was Bonnie he immediately turned away from what looked to her to be a finished—and incredible—saddle with symbols of Texas carved with beautiful intricacy into a flowing pattern on what she’d learned they called the skirts and the fenders.
“I’ll tell the hands, then saddle up and head for the lookout, see if I can see him anywhere,” he said as he wiped some sort of oil off his hands.
She felt more comfortable with him than any of the others, so she risked asking, “Why him for this? Why not call a veterinarian?”
“Because Keller knows almost as much, about horses at least. He’ll decide if we need to call the doc.” He tossed the rag he’d been using down on his workbench. His gray eyes held her gaze for a moment. “He wanted to be a vet. He got into a good school and was trying to decide between that and going for it in rodeo when Dad was killed.”
So he’d given up even more than she’d realized for his family. “That…I don’t know how that must have felt.”
“It’s been almost twenty years, and this is the first time I’ve seen that kind of fire in him again. Don’t do this if you don’t mean it, Sydney.”
And then he was gone. She stood there, staring at the saddle, a pinnacle of useful art, feeling a strange flood of heat flowing through her.
*
“Will she be all right?”
Lucas looked at Keller, who was kneeling next to the obviously straining animal, anxiously. “She should be,” he answered.
The boy went back to stroking the mare’s neck. Sydney watched her cousin, worried at how he’d said that. “What about the baby?” she asked.
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