By the time they reached the end of the ranch road, Lily had calmed down to sniffles. Even so, Sunny didn’t look any less frightened. She continued to sit half-turned in her seat, watching her niece as if something dire might happen if she looked away for a split second.
“I think she’s fine,” he said as he turned onto the highway and headed toward Jade Valley’s little hospital.
“I have to know for sure.”
It wasn’t until he squeezed her hand in reassurance that he realized he’d reached across the truck and taken Sunny’s hand in his. He told himself she didn’t appear to mind that he’d captured her hand yet again because all her thoughts were focused on Lily’s well-being. But when he started to release her, she didn’t let him. She squeezed back, latching onto him as if he was a safe port in her panic storm. Willing to be that for her, he held her hand all the way to the hospital.
As soon as he pulled up to the emergency room, however, she released her tight grip and rushed to get Lily out of her car seat and into the ER to see a doctor. By the time he parked and followed her inside, Lily was already being seen by Dr. Allen.
Dean resisted the urge to hold Sunny’s hand again or put his arm around her shoulders in support. In a small town like this, the news would be misunderstood and spread faster than a spark on parched grass. Instead, he stood nearby in case she needed him, listened as Sunny questioned Dr. Allen’s assessment that Lily was fine but was going to have a knot on her forehead.
“Are you sure? Don’t you need to run tests?”
Dr. Allen smiled despite the fact that his medical degree and years of experience were being questioned by someone who had neither. It likely wasn’t the first time he’d encountered a freaked-out relative.
“Sunny,” Dean said, capturing her attention. “Dr. Allen wouldn’t send Lily home if he thought she was in danger.”
Though she still looked as if she might fly Lily off to a specialist in LA, she finally nodded and thanked the doctor. By the time they walked out of the hospital, Lily was already smiling and tugging on her aunt’s ear. Sunny still looked as if she might break down in tears at any moment, so as soon as she had Lily buckled into her seat and had given her a stuffed penguin she’d found in the truck’s back seat, Dean pulled her aside and shut the back door. He turned Sunny to face him.
“You need to calm down. Everything is fine. You can’t freak out every time one of the kids falls or manages to bruise themselves. It’s what kids do.”
“I know.”
She sounded so mentally exhausted now that the rush of adrenaline had been spent that he couldn’t help pulling her into his arms. Again, she didn’t resist his comfort. When she hugged him in return, placing her palms against his back, he had to close his eyes and take a deep breath. Remind himself that to her, this was nothing more than a friend comforting a friend.
After a few seconds, Sunny stepped out of his embrace and gave him a shaky smile.
“Sorry I seem like a deranged person.”
“It’s okay. I’ve always known that you were.”
Her expression of shocked disbelief preceded her smacking him on the arm. He laughed as he backed away from her, glad to have been able to shift her away from her residual panic.
But as he drove back toward the ranch and listened to her give her dad an update, Dean realized how much of what remained of the Breckinridge family needed to be together. He understood the lengths to which Sunny was willing to go in order to bring them together. Some people might say she was being selfish by not coming back to Jade Valley instead of uprooting her family, but that wasn’t fair to her. She’d worked hard to accomplish what she had, and she could provide the kind of life for the twins that wasn’t feasible in rural Wyoming.
Not that there was anything wrong with the vast open spaces with more cows than people, but there were no big art museums, no symphonies, no cutting-edge health care, no top-notch higher education in or anywhere near Jade Valley.
But was he willing to go along with her ruse in order to help her? He mulled that question as the familiar pastures and cattle herds sped by his window. Maybe it wouldn’t have to go very far, maybe not even to the marriage part. Jonathon might very well see things from Sunny’s point of view, especially after Lily’s injury, and change his mind.
The possibility evaporated as soon as they got back and Jonathon pulled an “I told you so” regarding Lily’s fall. The look of frustration mixed with worry on Sunny’s face, like she wanted to scream at her dad and hug him close at the same time, finally made Dean’s decision for him.
When the two of them stepped outside, leaving the twins safely in the playpen, he looked out toward the mountains.
“I’ll do it,” he said.
“Do what?”
He slowly turned his gaze toward her. “Let’s date.”
CHAPTER FIVE
SUNNY’S PULSE LEAPED like a startled rabbit, only this surprise was welcome.
“Really?”
Dean nodded, and she had to resist the urge to hug him. Or maybe she should. That would point toward their sudden dating being real, right? Still, something stopped her. She’d already hugged him once outside the hospital, and she didn’t want to make things weird.
Well, no weirder than fake dating would be.
“I can’t believe we’re going to do this,” she said.
“Me neither. But, hey, I could use a little excitement in my life.”
She laughed. Dean was a great guy, a good friend, had been popular when they were in school, but he’d never been Mr. Excitement. Thrill seeking wasn’t his thing. He obviously was the type of man who just wanted to live a good, honest, hardworking life, and she admired him for that. She was a big proponent of knowing what you wanted from your time on Earth and going for it.
“Thank you.”
Again, he nodded.
“So, how does fake dating work? Do I obviously come to the house at some point and ask you out? I have no experience with grand gestures, just so you know.”
“Let’s try for a bit more subtlety,” she said, smiling at her lifelong friend. She owed him big for this, and she planned to repay him by helping him achieve his dream. Sunny had to admit it eased the ache in her heart at the thought of losing the ranch that she would be leaving it with someone who loved it every bit as much as her family did. In a way, Dean and his parents were family.
“So...?”
“How about we do a picnic with the twins down by the river tomorrow?”
“Is the aim to have your dad come along or not?”
“I don’t think he can manage that on crutches, do you? I’ll say it’s a thank-you for helping with Lily today but maybe, I don’t know, act a little differently somehow while mentioning you.”
She’d seen enough romantic movies to be able to come up with something.
“Okay, plan for lunchtime so I know when to be available?”
“Sounds good.”
With a nod, Dean headed off to resume whatever work was on his to-do list. He’d spent a lot of time with her today, so she felt bad that it had likely put him behind. But she was asking him to continue to carve time out of his schedule for her, and with only a possibility—not a certainty—that he’d be able to buy the ranch as a reward. She needed to find other ways to make this undertaking more beneficial to him during the process in case things didn’t work out how she wanted.
As she turned to head inside, the first idea of how to pay him back for his generosity came to her. Since they were going to have a picnic anyway, she’d bake him his favorite cake. That seemed like something that someone who was smitten with a guy would do as well, so bonus.
The sound of an approaching vehicle caused her to pause and turn to see who it was. She smiled when she saw the little cobalt-blue hatchback, remembering the giant smile Maya had worn in her “Here’s my new car�
� post a couple of months back.
Maya Pine skidded to a stop next to Sunny’s rental car and got out with her hands on her hips and a lifted eyebrow.
“I finally decided that if I wanted to see my best friend, I was going to have to come to her,” Maya said.
“You’re scolding me? It’s not like I’ve been here a week or something.”
“You have been in town twice.”
“Once, I hadn’t even been home yet. And today I was at the hospital.”
“Okay, fine. Details, details. I heard about Lily’s fall. Is she okay?”
“Thankfully, yes. Though I think I aged ten years.” Sunny pointed toward her hair. “I’m sure I have a nice patch of gray now.”
“You do not. You’re as beautiful as ever, darn you.”
Sunny laughed and opened her arms. Maya abandoned her scolding and hugged her as if they hadn’t seen each other in years instead of only six months. It didn’t matter that they texted literally every day. Being able to hang out in person was so much better.
When they went inside, Maya cooed over the babies like another adoring auntie. Truth was she got to see the twins more often than Sunny did. Guilt punched her that she had hatched her plan to move her family to California without telling Maya. They shared everything. But Sunny also knew that her bestie was likely going to tell her that she’d lost every last one of her marbles when she found out. If she didn’t let her in on the secret soon, however, Maya wouldn’t forgive her.
Maybe she’d give it a few days, see if she and Dean could actually stick to the plan, before revealing the truth. No sense telling Maya about her really-out-there plan if she or Dean decided that they couldn’t go through with it.
After they fed and diapered the babies and got them to fall asleep, she and Maya retreated to the kitchen, leaving her dad in his recliner reading the Casper paper and probably on his way to a nap of his own.
She poured two glasses of lemonade but didn’t sit across from her friend. Instead, she started searching the pantry to see if Judy had stocked up enough to allow Sunny to bake Dean’s favorite carrot cake with cream-cheese frosting.
“Are you baking me a cake because you missed me so much and feel guilty for not coming to see me sooner?”
Sunny shot her friend a “you’re pouring it on thick” look before shaking her head. Time to commence Operation Make Dad Think Dean and I Are Dating.
“It’s for Dean.”
“Dean? His birthday isn’t until December.”
“It’s a thank-you for today. He helped me out with Lily. Took us to the hospital, helped me calm down.”
“Oh, that was nice of him.”
What was that tone in Maya’s voice? It almost sounded as if she was insinuating something romantic between Sunny and Dean when the entire cake-baking undertaking was aimed at making her dad think that way, not her best friend. No, that couldn’t be it. Sunny simply had those types of thoughts running through her head and was hearing intent that wasn’t there. The three of them had been friends for ages.
But there had been the one time in high school when Maya had commented with obvious disdain on the fact that Dean had briefly dated Holly Vinson. Sunny distinctly remembered Maya saying that Dean could do better.
She hadn’t thought much about it at the time because she’d agreed, mainly because Holly was way too full of herself. Thank goodness she’d moved with her family to Idaho their junior year, meaning their senior year was blessedly Holly-free.
Maya didn’t have a thing for him, did she? No matter how much Sunny wanted her family together, she wasn’t about to take anything away from her best friend. Surely with her personality, Maya would have made her interest clear to Dean if there was any.
“Yeah, it was,” Sunny said, realizing that she’d let a lengthy pause stretch after Maya last spoke. “I might have been a bit of a mess when Lily was crying so hard she could hardly get her breath.”
A snort from the living room told her that her dad could hear their conversation just fine. Would he think twice about the cake though? After all, it was the kind of gesture her mom would have made for someone who’d done a good deed too.
“I bet it scared Lily more than hurt,” Maya said. “Mom always said that when Ethan or I fell. Said we’d cry like someone cut off a limb but five minutes later we were giggling and trying to ride the dog or something.”
“I’m pretty sure I did see Ethan ride the dog once.” When Maya had left for college, the kid was still only ten years old, an oopsie baby for Maya’s parents. Now he was the one attending college in Laramie.
“So, are you going to make me a cake too? I like cake.”
“I don’t have the ingredients for a pineapple one.”
“What kind are you making?”
“Carrot. It’s Dean’s favorite.”
She glanced at her friend in time to see a curious expression on Maya’s face.
“What’s that look?”
“You remember Dean’s favorite cake?”
“Um, yeah. How long have I known him? I remember once he shared some of the birthday cake his mom made for him when I was tutoring him. He mentioned it was his favorite.”
“That’s a random thing to remember.”
“Why? I have lots of dessert-centric memories. Sugar, glorious sugar!” Sunny made a dramatic gesture with the mixing spoon in her hand.
This time it was Maya who snorted at her.
“So, what’s the latest valley gossip?”
“Since we last talked, let’s see... Oh, Mrs. Lacey is retiring from teaching after eight hundred and fifty-three years.”
“Be nice.”
“What? She made biology miserable for me. Science is not my forte, and yet she seemed to want to make everyone into the next Louis Pasteur.”
“Actually, her class was more Darwinian.”
“See!” Maya jabbed her finger in Sunny’s direction. “You’re not as saintly as you want everyone to believe.”
“I’m far from saintly.” She was pretty sure none of the saints faked romantic relationships to get their fathers to do what they wanted.
“Well, as long as you know.”
Sunny glanced at Maya as she started mixing ingredients. “Tell me why we’re friends again.”
Maya smiled and cupped her cheeks in her upturned hands. “Because I’m adorable.”
Sunny rolled her eyes. “Whatever.”
“Okay, what else is new? Alma and Trudy are reportedly both scheming how to outdo each other at the Fall Festival, but then that’s not exactly new.”
Sunny smiled as she recalled the competing signs on the way into town. The two ladies’ feud went back as long as Sunny could remember so, no, not new.
Maya shared a few more random tidbits.
“I dream of one day having something really exciting to put in the paper.”
“You better specify good exciting. You don’t want the other kind.”
“True. At least I’m still in business, barely. A lot of papers can’t say the same.”
“As long as there are hunters and fishermen who want to show off their outdoorsman prowess to their neighbors, and kids’ sports to cover, I think you’ll be okay.”
But in reality even that might be in danger with the proliferation of social media among every age group.
Maya sighed and lowered her chin to her crossed arms on the table. “A lifetime of publishing photos of sixteen-point bucks and Millie Compton’s recipe column, will I ever survive the excitement? Sometimes I want to trade lives with you.”
Sunny shrugged. “You’re the one who chose to come back here after college.”
“I know, but it’s home.”
Maya, who had family scattered from Jade Valley to Worland and all across the Wind River Reservation, had never been destined for living in a city
. She might whine about the lack of excitement, but she was good at what she did and made the most she could out of the Post. If she didn’t run the paper, it would probably cease publication and local residents would have to depend on gossip at Alma’s or Trudy’s for their news.
“You should bring the kiddos and have lunch with me tomorrow. I know Trudy would love to see you. She still says you’re the best waitress she’s ever had.”
“I can’t tomorrow. I have plans.”
“Plans?”
“The twins and I are having a picnic with Dean.”
“With Dean. Is this part of the thank-you, as well?”
Sunny nodded as she poured the cake mix into two circular pans.
“And getting the twins out of the house while Dad’s not able to get around, as well. You have to enjoy the warm weather here while it lasts.”
“I know you’re all California girl now, but I don’t think mid-July is on winter’s doorstep.”
Sunny slid the cake pans into the oven then leaned her hip against the counter while facing Maya.
“No, but time flies. I want to enjoy my visit, and that means not being stuck inside all the time. You know that even when I travel I spend as much time exploring outdoors as I can.”
Maya scrunched up her face in a “something’s off” expression before slowly replying, “That’s true.”
“But the next day, we’re totally on for lunch. I can taste Trudy’s cooking now.”
“You better bring me something when you come back,” her dad called out from the living room.
“If you didn’t fall off horses, you could go yourself.”
This was more like it, the normal teasing she and her dad tossed back and forth. She did not like being at odds with him. It didn’t happen often, but when it did she always felt as if she’d taken a wrong path even when she was in the right.
Thumping from the other room preceded her dad opening the front door and going outside. He, like her and every other member of her family, was an outdoor person and could only stand being confined within four walls for so long before he got antsy. If he did nothing out there but watch the occasional bird fly by, he’d feel more at peace than stuck in his chair. There was enough of that during the winter months when cold, brutal winds kept everyone inside except for when they had to do essential ranch tasks to ensure the care and safety of the animals.
The Rancher's Unexpected Twins--A Clean Romance Page 5
