Home Again with You

by Liza Kendall

  “Thank you for bringing them, Sammy, and not to be harsh, buddy, but it’s none of your beeswax.” She dredged up a smile to soften the words, fished out a five-dollar bill, and gave it to him. Then she eyed the stunning bouquet as if it held toxic waste—because it did.

  “I’ll just ask Maggie.”

  “You do that, bud.”

  Sighing, Sam slouched out of the barn, as Jules’s fury grew.

  Who the hell did Rhett Braddock think he was? He’d almost chewed off his own arm to get out from under her that morning in Dallas. He’d used her like a Kleenex. He’d never even called her afterward. And now this? This was supposed to make up for his behavior? Not even close.

  With a silent apology to Maggie at Petal Pushers, who’d clearly put in untold hours of work on the thing, she heaved the flower arrangement into her arms. It was as heavy as a sofa, too . . . and there was only one place for it.

  Dad stepped out of the small bathroom. His eyes widened. “Good Lord! Those are absolutely the most beautiful flowers I have ever laid eyes on. Who’re they from?”

  Jules emitted a growl.

  “Pardon?”

  She couldn’t speak.

  “Ah. They’re from Braddock. They gotta be. Well, now—what a class act. He’s sent them as a gesture of goodwill, has he? To seal the deal. And get on your good side, huh?” Dad laughed.

  Wrong Braddock, Dad. But she had no intention of explaining to her father that she’d accidentally had a sleazy one-night stand with Rhett, the guy she’d been dreaming about forever. Well, now she didn’t have to dream; reality had bitten her on the butt like a summer mosquito. Jules spied the wheelbarrow she used for mucking out stalls and lurched toward it.

  “Honey? What’re you doing?”

  She dumped the flowers in, headfirst.

  “What has got into you, girl?” Dad called after her.

  “Please leave me alone, Dad. I’m sorry.”

  “I understand you’re not happy about the sale, but . . .”

  Jules trundled the arrangement the whole length of the barn, past the gently nickering and snorting inmates who eyed her curiously, and all the way to Frost’s stall at the other end. His once-white muzzle had gone gray, his lower lip drooped, and his eye sockets had sunk. But Frost was still beautiful; still had one blue eye and one brown.

  She set down the wheelbarrow, kissed him on the muzzle, and then opened the half door that kept him inside. She gestured to the offensive arrangement. “What in the Sam Hill does your owner think I’m gonna do with these? Huh?”

  Frost tossed his head in the air and snorted.

  “Exactly. They are obnoxious!”

  Frost eyed them dubiously.

  “Does he really think I’m this easy to manipulate? Send her flowers and that’ll solve everything?”

  The old rodeo horse thoughtfully stuck out his tongue, as if to say, Dummy.

  “What should I do with them, boy?”

  Frost whinnied.

  “Does he think flowers make up for him being an epic jerk?”

  The horse blinked.

  “Yeah, no. They do not. So do you like the taste of fern? How about tiger lilies? Roses?”

  Frost nosed them gently, and then snorted pollen out of his nose, shaking his head.

  “I agree. I’m sure hay tastes much better. And it’s prettier, too, than these . . . this . . . fake, pretentious, overblown, sickeningly expensive, and freakin’ WAY-TOO-LATE bouquet!”

  Jules picked up the handles of the wheelbarrow and tipped the whole thing into Frost’s stall. Then she stepped out, shut the door, and glowered down at the flowers.

  Frost shifted his weight from side to side. He snorted again. Sidled around, not used to having something that size on the floor of his stall. And then, completely unself-conscious as horses are, he relieved himself upon them, blinking lazily as he did so.

  Jules laughed so hard she choked. “Good boy! Great idea. That’s exactly how they should be watered. Wish I’d thought of that myself.” She unzipped her fanny pack and fumbled out a couple of apple slices. She held them flat in her palm, and Frost accepted them with appreciation, munching away.

  “He likes beer better,” said a deep male voice that she’d hoped to never, ever hear again. “I brought him some.”

  She whirled so fast that she stumbled and fell—not gracefully—into the wheelbarrow.

  “Good to see you, Jules.” Rhett Braddock’s blue eyes danced as he extended a hand to help her out.

  She eyed it as if it were a python. “What are you doing here? Get out of my barn.”

  Rhett pursed his lips and shoved his hands into the pockets of his suit trousers—which looked as though they were custom-tailored, out of fabric she couldn’t have afforded one square inch of. “Get out of your barn, huh?” He looked over his shoulder, where to further her mortification, her father stood, his brow furrowed.

  “Well,” said Satan Incarnate, turning back to face her. “As a gentleman, I would truly like to oblige you, Miss Braddock. But there’s one small problem: It’s now my barn. So maybe, honey, you should take my hand and get out of my wheelbarrow?” He smiled the most gentle, apologetic smile to take anything vicious out of his words.

  Rhett? Rhett Braddock had bought their property? Not Declan?

  Impossible. Unacceptable. Worse than the worst nightmare . . .

  “Julianna Holt,” said her father sternly, as she lay sprawled on her butt in the wheelbarrow, legs splayed. “I brought you up with more manners than this. You stand up now, you say a proper hello to Rhett, here, and then you will say a heartfelt thank-you to him, for bailing us all out of a jam.”

  Rage, pure rage, built within her. Thank you? Say a proper hello? How about Rhett Braddock learned to say a proper goodbye after his wham-bam-thank-you-ma’am routine?

  * * *

  Rhett felt bad for Jules, he really did. The situation was tough enough on her without Billy Holt demanding that she make nice to him. But he could hardly explain to her father what had gone down between them. Without a doubt, he’d get a fist in the face instead of the deed to the Holt property.

  He shot her a sympathetic glance, which she rejected by simply not acknowledging it at all. Nobody, not even sexy, smudged, mad-as-a-wet-cat Jules, should look that good sprawled in a wheelbarrow in dirty work clothes—but she did. Rhett’s heart skipped a beat, even though she’d dumped his flowers into Frost’s stall and watched him piss on them.

  A classic move—even if it was, quite literally, at his expense. But it also was a move that told him something. If she was this angry, then she had feelings for him—and he wasn’t quite sure how to feel about that.

  Methinks the lady doth protest too much.

  He was confident now that his apology bouquet had worked even better than he’d expected. She was just royally pissed at her father for selling the Holt place to him—and at him for buying it.

  She was a sight for sore eyes . . . and so was Frost, after all these years, chomping on some hay. Frost looked surreal, standing in a field of pissed-on flowers.

  Jules still refused to take Rhett’s hand. She climbed out of the wheelbarrow on her own.

  So he moved forward and stroked Frost’s muzzle. “Hey, buddy. Do you even remember me, after all this time?”

  Frost pushed against his hand, inhaled deeply, then snorted.

  “Yeah. I’m sorry. But I’ve missed you.”

  Frost nuzzled his neck, which almost brought tears to Rhett’s eyes. And then he nipped him smartly on the shoulder.

  “Ow! Okay, I guess I deserve that.” Rhett rubbed the injury.

  Jules grinned and then gestured to the remnants of the bouquet in Frost’s stall. “So sorry, Big Shot. I brought the flowers to your horse to show him what a great guy you are. I set ’em on top of the door so he could get a good loo
k. Then they kind of slipped and fell.”

  Billy coughed and scuffed the cement floor with the toe of his roper.

  Rhett raised an eyebrow at Jules. “Sure they did. A shame, isn’t it?”

  “A damn shame.” She rocked back on the heels of those filthy rubber riding boots. Then she went into the stall, plucked a lily from the sawdust inside, stood on her tiptoes, and stuck it behind Rhett’s ear.

  He struggled to keep a straight face.

  “Jules,” said her father. He shook his head, disgusted, and walked away.

  “I was just being gracious, Dad. Sayin’ thank you to our savior, like you asked.”

  “No, baby doll, you weren’t. And we all know it,” he called over his shoulder.

  Rhett looked down at Jules, noting that she didn’t seem to like being called baby doll. “Well, now. Thank you. That’s better than a lei any day.”

  Her face flamed at the double entendre; the reference to what they’d had in Dallas. She looked as though she wanted to disembowel him.

  Rhett chuckled, reaching out to scratch behind Frost’s ear. His horse nuzzled him again and Rhett splayed his fingers against Frost’s neck, looking through them at the gray sprinkled throughout the old boy’s coat. Funny how he hadn’t expected him to age. He’d thought Frost would look exactly the same. “Good to see ya, boy. Looking forward to riding you,” he murmured.

  “He can’t take your weight for long,” Jules told him. “Not now.”

  “You’re the expert,” he murmured, under his breath.

  Her face flushed redder than Scarlett, parked outside on the gravel.

  Rhett pictured her the last time he’d seen her: long brown hair mussed from her pillow and sex, her eyes hazy with sleep, her soft, parted lips. Her smooth tanned neck and arms against the twisted, white hotel sheets. She’d looked sweet and yet sultry, a dream girl.

  But then the light had gone out of her eyes as he’d told her it could never happen again. Which it couldn’t—no matter how much he might fantasize about it. Because Grady really would disembowel him. He was the dark, creative, vengeful type. And when it came to someone taking advantage of his sister, Rhett couldn’t blame him.

  “Get out of my barn,” she repeated in a deadly undertone.

  Rhett sighed and nodded. “It’ll take you some time to get used to this,” he said. “I understand.”

  “You understand nothing,” Jules told him, with a sidelong glance at her father, who was staying at a safe distance and checking that cut over Shiner’s eye—she’d meant to get to it earlier, but it had been quite a morning.

  “I’m just trying to help you folks out.” Rhett stroked Frost’s muzzle again and then reached into his back pocket and pulled out a bottle of the beer he’d brought. He knocked the cap off on the door of the stall with practiced ease while Jules blinked rapidly in irritation.

  “You think you’re some kind of white knight,” she said. “Well, you’re not! You’re a nightmare.”

  He tipped some of the beer into his palm and held it out for Frost, who slurped it right up. “Jules, darlin’, if there’s anything I am not, it’s any kind of mare.” He grinned. “And you know it. You saw the equipment—”

  “If you ever refer to what happened between us in Dallas again,” she said through gritted teeth, “I will cut off ‘the equipment.’ You hear me? And then I will toss it into a pan, fry it, and serve it to you for breakfast with hash browns.”

  The lady was nothing if not direct. “You threatening me, Jules?”

  “You bet your fancy ass I am,” she snapped. “Now, for the love of God, will you get out of my barn? Do I really have to turn the hose on you?”

  Rhett saw that it would take some time to overcome her objection to his presence. It was no different from the hoops he’d had to jump through to recruit the marquee investors for his first fund. But he’d not only gotten them to take a meeting, he’d had them eating out of his hand by the end of it.

  He’d have Julianna Holt eating out of his hand soon, too. He didn’t doubt it for a second. But the secret? The secret was letting her win a minor battle or two. So he’d cede her this one.

  “Okay, I’ll leave now. But we’re gonna have to talk at some point, Jules.”

  “I have nothing to say to you. Not now. Not ever.”

  “Don’t be that way, honey. It’s real good to see you. I mean that.”

  In answer, Jules extended her arm and pointed to the open door of the barn.

  “Oh, is that the way out?” Rhett asked innocently. “Thanks for showing me.”

  Outside, he stood by Scarlett—who looked out of place there—and took a moment to appreciate the cool, dry, cedar-and-mesquite-scented Texas air. The crunch of gravel under his delicate Italian dress shoes. The whinny of a horse from the depths of the barn. The tension in him uncoiled, eased, dissipated. This part of Silverlake felt like home.

  Then Jules followed him outside, clearly still outraged. She took in Scarlett in one sweeping, contemptuous glance and curled her lip—not the reaction he was used to in Dallas.

  “You think you can show up in Silverlake and buy your way out of anything, don’t you?” she shot at him.

  “What? No . . .”

  “Buy my silence to my brother. You’re worried that a word from me would destroy the friendship. So you write a check, put us in your debt, and expect me to fall all over you—like Dad and Grady.”

  “No!” She was taking this all wrong. “That’s not how this is, Jules. Not at all.”

  “Then, how is it?”

  “Grady told me about your dad’s medical issues. And that running the place was too much for him. He said your family was hoping to sell.”

  “Running the place was too much for him. I’ve been telling him that for years. In the very same conversations where I also told him I was ready, willing, and excited to take over and make the place my own!”

  “You still get to run things,” Rhett said.

  Wrong thing to say.

  “But it’s never going to be mine.” It looked like Jules was blinking back tears for a moment. Aw, hell. Rhett wanted to take her into his arms, but that was definitely not on the menu here.

  “It is still yours,” he said helplessly. “You’re the manager. For life.”

  “Thanks so much for making that decision for me—you and my dad. Hellooooo, I’m a whole person over here! I’m not some property to be bundled into your contract along with the rest of the business.”

  Rhett cocked his head. Wait a minute. This wasn’t just about the business. “We weren’t trying to make a decision for you. We were giving you an option,” he clarified.

  “An option. Gee, thanks.”

  “Taking care of you.”

  “I don’t need to be taken care of! This isn’t the ’50s.”

  Rhett sighed and threw up his hands. “What can I say to make things right?”

  She shook her head, and they stood in an awkward silence for a while.

  “Look, I’m sorry that I left the way I did,” Rhett said at last. “That night was . . .” He released a breath in lieu of words.

  She raised her head. “Yes?” she prompted.

  Rhett cleared his throat as if that would help clear the sexy memories from his mind. Nope. No help at all. “Very . . .” he growled. He shrugged, raising his eyebrows, biting his lower lip.

  A slow blush crawled up her neck as he stared straight into her eyes. “Well, you know how it was,” he said, in a low tone. “Can’t buy that, or fake that . . .”

  She nodded, her lips parted.

  “But Grady’s my best friend,” Rhett said.

  Her mouth shut with a snap.

  “I should never have touched you, Jules. But worse, after I did, I should never have left you thinking it didn’t mean anything to me. It . . . it . . .”
r />   Her eyes widened. “Yes?” she asked in a breathy voice. “Finish your sentence.”

  His brain was muddled. He couldn’t find a verb to save his life. And it hardly worked as a noun for what they’d shared. “It’s never going to happen again. I promise. Obviously. I mean, it can’t.”

  She raised her chin. “Of course not. There are two people involved in that decision, Rhett. And I’m one of them, by the way. I’m a person, not just someone’s little sister. And as a person in my own right, I have zero interest in being your little side of country fun.”

  “Little side of . . . ? What are you talking about?”

  “It was a mistake,” she said flatly.

  He nodded, even though at this point, he felt like denying it . . .

  Damnation: That was Grady’s dusty black Ford F-150 rolling down the gravel drive. He would choose this extremely inopportune moment to interrupt them.

  Jules rolled her eyes and stomped back into the barn without another word.

  Rhett had no choice but to wait for Grady, who decided to put on his best Texas guy show.

  “Well, if it ain’t old Rhett Braddock, home for Fool Fest,” he boomed out the window. He took in Scarlett and whistled. “You steal your mama’s egg money to buy that pickle wagon?”

  “And my granny’s, too.” Rhett’s grin was so wide that the back of his head almost fell off.

  Grady swung down out of the truck, looking even more massive in person than he did on video call. His muscular frame was wrapped in jeans and a black fire department T-shirt, and the nonregulation flop of hair in front of his eyes and silver thumb ring hinted at his dark, rebellious streak. He wrapped Rhett in a dusty bear hug and clapped him hard on the back. “How ya doin’, man? Look at these glad rags of yours . . . gold cuff links?” He whooped. “Gonna pick your teeth out here with those?”

  “Something like that,” Rhett agreed.

  “Well, kick off the fancy shoes—really, WTF, man?—put on your sittin’ britches and stay awhile. Never thought I’d see the day. Or the week. Or the year, for that matter.”